Forestry, lobbying and resource legislation, 1931-1961 : oral history transcript / and related material, 1966-1968

University of California • Berkeley

5» ••< t • .- f '

University of California Bancroft Library/Berkeley

Regional Oral History Office

WILLIAM R. SCHOFIELD

FORESTRY, LOBBYING, AND RESOURCE LEGISLATION
1931-1961

An Interview Conducted by
Amel ia R. Fry

Berkeley
1968

Produced Under the Auspices of
Forest History Society

William Schofield 1946

California Forest Protective Association
Lobbyist

All uses of this manuscript are covered by an
agreement between William R. Schofield and the
Regents of the University of California and the
Forest History Society, dated 25 September 1968.
The manuscript is thereby made available for
research purposes. All literary rights in the
manuscript, including the right to publish, are
reserved to the Bancroft Library of the Univer
sity of California at Berkeley and the Forest
History Society. No part of the manuscript may
be quoted for publication without the written
permission of the Director of the Bancroft
Library of the University of California at
Berkeley or the Director of the Forest History
Society.

Request for permission to quote for pub
lication should be addressed to the Regional
Oral History Office, 486 Library, and should
include identification of the specific passages
to be quoted, anticipated use of the passages,
and identification of the user. The legal
agreement with William R. Schofield requires
that he be notified of the request and allowed
thirty days in which to respond.

FOREWORD

This interview is part of a series produced by the Regional
Oral History Office of Bancroft Library, University of California
at Berkeley, under a grant from the Forest History Society, whose
funding was made possible by the Hill Family Foundation.
Transcripts in the series consist of interviews with: DeWitt Nelson,
retired head of the Department of Natural Resources, California;
William R. Schofield, lobbyist for timber owners, California
Legislature; Rex Black, also lobbyist for timber owners, California
Legislature; Walter F. McCulloch, retired Dean of the School of
Forestry, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon; Thornton
Hunger, retired head of U.S. Forest Service Experiment Station,
Pacific Northwest Region; Leo Isaac, retired, genetics research
in the U.S. Forest Service Experiment Station, Pacific Northwest
Region; and Walter Lund, retired chief, Division of Timber
Management, Pacific Northwest Region. Copies of the manuscripts
are on deposit in the Bancroft Library, University of California,
Berkeley; The Department of Special Collections, University of
California at Los Angeles; and the Forest History Society, Yale
University.

Interviews done for the Forest History Society under other
auspices include: Emanuel Fritz, professor of forestry, University
of California, Berkeley, with funding from the California Redwood
Association; and a forest genetics series on the Eddy Tree Breeding

-2-

Station with tapes by W. C. Gumming, A. R. Liddicoet, and N. T.
Mirov, currently funded by the Forest History Society Oral History
Program.

The Regional Oral History Office was established to tape
record autobiographical interviews with persons prominent in the
history of the West. The Office is under the administrative
supervision of the Director of the Bancroft Library.

Willa Klug Baum, Head
Regional Oral History Office

Regional Oral History Office
Room 486 The Bancroft Library
University of California
Berkeley, California

INTRODUCTION

William R. Schofield is a lobbyist, a term that sometimes conjures
up images of bribes being passed in the dark recesses of a bar, of fur
tive agreements between rotund, cigar-smoking characters in smoke-filled
rooms. While Mr. Schofield does enjoy a certain rotundity, the similarity
ends there between the deliciously evil prototype and the real man.

Schofield's advocacy in the California Legislature was honest because
it was open. There was never any doubt in anyone's mind where he stood or
for whose interest he spoke. For twenty of his thirty-five years in the
''Third House," he represented the California Forest Protective Association
whose members own eighty-five percent of private and commercial forest land
in the state. He brought to this advocacy an authority of his own stemming
from his professional training in both forestry and law.

His style of operating, therefore, carried with it an expertise and
integrity that now allows him to speak freely on a topic that some members
of his profession might attempt to whitewash, sweep under the rug, or dis
pose of altogether with resolute silence. Schofield's long career has
served to uphold the validity of lobby i ng-done-right, and he has long since
lost any defens i veness about it, if indeed he ever possessed any.

However, the significance of Mr. Schofield is not limited to the
"Third House.'1 His training in forestry, his early experiences and inno
vations on the national forests of Montana and Idaho as a fire guard, map
per, and timber appraiser; his completion of correspondence courses in en
gineering and law; and his winning an election for county engineer in Blaine
County, Montana — all combined to form an unusually comprehensive training
for one who later was to be an important gladiator in the arena of politics
of conservation.

When he resigned from the Forest Service in 1923, he moved to
southern California briefly; then Hammond Lumber Company in Humboldt
County lured him north as timber engineer in the redwood country. Four
years later, he became Secretary-Manager of the Humboldt Redwood Refor
estation Association, then in 1930 accepted a job as the entire staff of
the Humboldt County Planning Commission.

It was in the latter assignment that Schofield first appeared at the
Capitol in Sacramento as a lobbyist. The task was seeking passage of a
resolution that would set up a state committee to study the tax situation,
and in Humboldt County this meant an opportunity for the timber owners to
receive some property tax relief. The resolution did pass, allocating

$90,000 for the study and setting up a Tax Research Bureau, which Schofield
joined as its timber engineer the following year after his county job had
petered out for lack of funds. The new tax proposals that came out of
the Bureau's study were put on a special ballot in 1933, proposing that
(I) utility property be taxed state-wide but transferred to county coffers,
and (2) that the state levy a sales tax and an income tax.

With other members of the State Board of Equalization, Schofield
campaigned long and hard for this Constitutional amendment, and after it
won the election, he worked equally hard in the Legislature for bills to
implement the amendment. Then in the new Valuation Division of the Board
of Equalization, he became the Senior Valuation Engineer, a position he
held until 1943 when he followed S. Rexford Black as Secretary-Manager of
the California Forest Protective Association.

Mr. Schofield's first two decades of lobbying coincided with what is
usually referred to as the Samish Years, named after the self-proclaimed
superlobby ist ; for it was then that Arthur H. Samish was attempting to
make a personal empire out of the "Third House," if not of the entire
state government. Despite the sensational expose^ of his operations which
followed legislative investigation, the lobbying world in those days did
in fact consist of much more than Samish 's shady domain.

It was a world also peopled by legislative advocates who openly rep
resented a specific interest, who were able to impart to a legislator needed
and reliable information about the industry or association he represented,
and who satisfied a mutual need to provide the particular point of view of
that interest toward any legislation.

Mr. Schofield shows that he has always accepted his lobbying duties
with a sense of responsibility. As a professional forester, he was in a
position to present technical advice as well as the candid attitude of
the timber industry toward any pertinent legislation — especially land taxa
tion. Schofield recognized and respected the crucial nature of his role:
he was a legislative advocate representing a group of people bound together
by a common interest, and as such in the democratic process he supplemented
the legislator, who represented people with only a geographic locale in
common .

Perhaps one of the most important pieces of legislation that Schofield
was involved in was the 1945 Forest Practice Act, which he helped author.
Ray Clar, who then was Assistant State Forester and later became the author
of California Government and Forestry, says that when the Forest Practice
Act came up, along with proposals for state forest lands acquisition and
insect control legislation, Schofield was a "friendly assistant" — friendly
to the State Division of Forestry. "He had enough power to kill it," Clar
continues, "but instead he helped."

Schofield explains that state regulation of cutting practices was
just good sense. The heat from federal regulation attempts was reaching
the boiling point, and state regulations, which could be formulated by
represental i ves from industry, would tnke the heat off.

Schofield's story starts at a time when only House rules required
lobbyists to register but carried no penalty if they did not. There was
no compulsive financial reporting as there is today. Many, like Schofield,
registered for each session with the sergeant-at-arms. "After all, there
was nothing to lose," he points out.

Those were the days, too, when lobbyists were allowed to enter the
Assembly chamber and sit with a legislator — even though each house had
adopted a loosely-worded rule against this friendly practice. However,
Schofield usually operated in the Senate, where the custom was verboten,
not because of the official pronouncement, but because the Senate functioned
with a modus operandus that was a "gentlemen's agreement that certain things
would be ethical," and lobbyists on the Senate floor was not one of those
th i ngs .

In those days (as now), it was commonly the custom to supplement
the extremely low pay of a solon by paying him a generous "lawyer's fee"
if he was a lawyer, or if he wasn't, by finding other ways to grant him
favors. At the same time, the State Constitution held lobbying to be a
felony and defined it as influencing "the vote of a member of the legis
lature by bribery, reward, or intimidation." Understandably, no one had
ever been convicted under this statute. (Finally, in 1962 several lobby
ists, including Schofield, managed to put through a Constitutional change
redefining lobbyists simply as "persons appearing for or against matters
of legislation" and separating their functions from the criminal activities
of bribery and intimidation.)

The contrast between the official regulatory pronouncements on lobby
ing and the actual operating mores in the Capitol is apt to provoke a be
mused grin from Schofield, who has long been operating within the dichotomy.
He knows the real ground rules are based on the solid rock of long-tested
truth: legislators and lobbyists need each other.

So it was that after the sorry state of lobbying in California was
exposed in H. R. Phi Ibrick's Legi slati ve Investigative Report in 1939*
it took ten years before any legislation resulted. Even then, Schofield
maintains that the reform legislation changed very little the methods of
the ''Third House," although he concedes there were two or three years of
real watch-dogging and strict adherence to the new legislation before
laxity set in. "And it'll get more and more lax," says the old pro with
an indulgent chuckle. "Then we'll have another big investigation. That's
the way it always goes."

Schofield does speak of a few differences in lobbying then and now,
however. The contrast he sees is not the sudden onset of virtue springing
from the required financial reports; rather it is changes in the accepted
behavior codes among the lobbyists and legislators themselves. For instance,
he mentions that in the Thirties electronic bugging was more of a common

*Senate Daily Journal, April 4, 1939 [quickly stricken from record
hut Inter issued as a book by Governor 01 son J.

practice in Sacramento. On the other hand, there was a certain credo of
honor — a promise was a promise. Be it that of the lobbyists or legislator,
the word of a man was to be depended on; now, not so.

In addition, the affable Schofield has found that today the access
of a lobbyist to a legislator has been made more difficult because of the
advent of the legislative intern program. The solons now depend more on
their interns and less on the lobbyists for information on pending legis
lation. And forester Schofield feels that the young interns sometimes are
not as knowledgeable about technical matters, such as those involving the
timber industry, as they need to be. There is no doubt that this practice
has somewhat weakened the tie between lobbyist and lawmaker; in fact, in
some offices now it is the intern with whom the lobbyist must deal, not
the solon himself.

We began tape-recording the interviews on May II, 1966, after this
office finished some recording sessions with Schofield's predecessor in
C.F.P.A., Rex Black. It was five years after Schofield's so-called re
tirement. He had spent the first two years of his retirement as a special
consultant to train a new lobbyist for the East Bay Municipal Utility Dis
trict. The following year, he went back into harness to consult when
needed with his successor in C.F.P.A. because severance tax legislation,
the traditional bugaboo for California timber owners, had suddenly grown
into a serious threat.

After that was scotched, he apparently acknowledged the fact that
his "retirement was a failure and agreed to handle the lobbying for the
geothermal energy interests of the Morton Salt Company, seeking to liber
alize the land-leasing acreage limitation which applies to underground
steam supplies. For a year, he represented the Northern California As
sociation of Employment Agencies.

In addition, he has an on-going agreement to lobby to prevent any
moves by the state Legislature to turn over to the federal government
the proposed state park lands that are slated to become a part of the
Redwood National Park. To round out his advocacy portfolio, he now rep
resents the California Agricultural Aircraft Association — the crop dusters.

For a year and a half, both Schofield and myself were too involved
in other work to apply ourselves to editing this transcript. Finally,
each went through the typed manuscript for ambiguities and errors; in
our office, Alice King and Evelyn Fairburn also assisted. Schofield was
as diligent as any lifelong scholar in his gathering of supporting material
for illustrative purposes, and he was scrupulous in checking over the
transcript for vaguely-worded conversational phrases that might lead to
mi sunderstandi ng.

One diversion that postponed our editing was a request by the Uni
versity Television Office that we attempt a forty-five minute video-tape.
Bill Schofield seemed to be the ideal subject for such an experimenl: his
lucid articulation, his direct approach to a subject that sometimes drives
others underground, and his marvelously flexible face that would be a

camera man's delight.

The result was a video-tape that covers the subject of lobbying
much as it is dealt with in this manuscript. The video-tape serves as
one way to explore whether visual-oral history is worth the effort and
financial outlay for archival or classroom use. Those who have used it
in classrooms are generously laudatory, at least to us. Archival use is
another question. In view of present costs, and the limited time most
scholars have, forty-five minutes seems unnecessarily long for such an
archival supplement to the transcript of the audio-tape.

Schofield is currently doing a bit of scholarly work at his home
in Albany, California, between trips to Sacramento. Over lunch the other
day, he expressed the hope that, if he can resist the charms of his youth
ful offspring — such as the daughter who just returned from Iran with his
first grandchild — his "History of Laws, Legislation, and Lobbying in
California" can be finished.

(Mrs. ) Ame I ia R. Fry
I nterviewer-Edi tor

December 10, 1968

Regignal Oral History Office
Room 486 The Bancroft Library
Jniversity of California
Berkeley, California

IFORNIA INDUSTRIAL FOREST CONSULTANTS

SCHOF.ELD "5 Nf/lSON STREET

,LT,Nn (Nome™ (owner &• Operator) >UBANY, CAI/F. 94706

TEIEPHONE: 526-7857

Cons-ale ing services in Forest Management, Timber Appraisal, Tirfcer
Taxation and Public Relations*

Bachelor of 3cieneeria Forestry, University of Idaho* (1916)
registered Professional Engineer (Civil). State of California
Registered Legislative Advocate, State of California

iiembor, Society of American Foresters

Member, Association of Consulting Foresters (President 1966-1P68)

Member, Forestry Advisory Committee National lumber Manufacturers AssA

Contributing Kewbar &, Trustee, western Forestry &. Conservation Ass* a*

Member, Statewide Natural Resources Committee, Calif .~3tate Chamber of

Comneree, ( President, Western Forestry and Conservation Ass'n 1963)

Member, Forest History Society, Inc.

Member, Commonwealth Club of California*

Legislative Consultant ^ East Bay Municipal Utility District, Oeklaad, Ca

Imperial Thermal Products, Inc. Chicago, 111.

Employment Agencies Association of Northern Gal.

Sail f oral* Forest fiyetoattv* A«s'n, 3&crft»enOO,C

Chronology of Employment & Experience

Summer 1913 Fire Guard and Fire Patrol, U. S. Forest Service, Selway

National Forest, Idaho.
Summers 191l»-l5 - Grazing and Timber Reconnaissance & Appraisal; Caribou,

Sevier and Cache National Forests, Idaho and Tit.ah.
^16 Ora7,jr(p and Timber Reconnaissance Conpilatlc^ and

Analysis; Cache National Forest, Logan, Utah.

1917-1919 First Lieutenant, U. S. Army Air Force.

1919-1920 Chief of Mapping, Range and Timber Reconnaissance; District

1, (now Region l) U. S. Forest Service, Missoula, Montana.

> _ County Engineer, Elaine County, Montana.

192JL-1923 Deputy Forest Supervisor, Wyoming-Bridger National Forest,

Kemmerer, Wyoming.

192U-1928 Logging Engineer, Hammond Lumber Company, Samoa, California.

1928-1930 Secretary-Manager, Humboldt Redwood Reforestation Association,

•* '^4 ^B^a^^^l^rto---- ^^ f^'<*~* &»-«<«*••••• »\'>j-v&.i , . ^ &,«• .

L L Secretary-engineer,1 Humboldt County Planning Commission,

Eureka, California.

!?-1933 Timber Engineer, Tax Research Bureau, State of California.

1933-191*3 Senior Valuation Engineer, California State Board of

Equalisation.

19143-1961 :jpcre'-ary-Manager, California Forest Protective Association,

>'Jan Fran^ipco, California.

/?- Present — Consulting Engineer- (Forestry, Legislation) Public Relat
ions

Thirty-Five Year Graduate

Biographical Sketch of William R. Schofield
By Helen M. Schofield

(for use at a class reunion at the University of Idaho in 1951)

A Native of Illinois, William R. Schofield completed his
elementary and high school education in El Paso, Illinois, and entered
the University of Idaho in the fall of 1912.

During the summer vacations he was employee! by the U.S. Forest
Service on the Selway and Caribou National Forests. Following graduation'
in June 1916, he was employed on the Cache and Sevier National Forests
until World War I.

In May 1917 he entered the First Officers Training Camp at
Presidio of San Francisco, later transferring to the Air Service Ground
School at the University of California. Trained with the French as a
pilot, he was commissioned a First Lieutenant and served in France until
the close of the War.

On his return from the War in 1919 he became Chief of Grazing
Reconnaissance in District One, U.S. Forest Service, with headquarters
in Missoula, Montana.

In 1920 he resigned from the Forest Service and was elected
county engineer of Elaine County, Montana. After one and one-half years
in this position he resigned to become deputy supervisor of the Wyoming-
Bridger National Forest, headquarters at Kemmerer, Wyoming. In 1922
he resigned from the Forest Service to go into business for himself
which took him to Southern California.

From 1924 to 1932 he was a resident of Humboldt County, California,
employed during these years as a timber engineer for the Hammond Lumber
Co., secretary-supervisor of the Humboldt Redwood Reforestation Association,
and secretary-engineer of the Humboldt County Planning Commission.

From 1932 to 1943 Mr. Schofield was employed by the State of
California as timber engineer for the State Tax Research Bureau, and
as administrative assistant and senior valuation engineer for the
California State Board of Equalization engaged in timber taxation and
valuation.

In 1943 he assumed his present position of secretary-manager of
the California Forest Protective Association, San Francisco, California,
one of the oldest existing associations of private timber ownership in
the nation. During its forty-one years of existence this Association
has played a major part in the development and enactment of California's
efficient and progressive forest protection and management laws. As
legislative representative of the timber owners and operators in the
state, Mr. Schofield co-authored the California Forest Practice Act
of 1945, designed to promote sustahed forest production on California's
8.3 million acres of privately owned forest lands.

-2-

Mr. Schofield married Elizabeth McMillan of Samoa, California,
in 1920. Lieutenant Richard M. Schofield, the only son of this marriage,
was killed in action in the third B-29 bombing raid of Nagoya, Japan,
on December 22, 1944.

In 1942 Mr. Schofield married Helen Meyer of Sacramento, California.
We have two daughters, Marian, eight, and Roberta, seven, and our residence
is in Berkeley, California, where the welcome sign will always be out
for grads, former students, and faculty of the University of Idaho.

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

INTRODUCTION

CHRONOLOGY

EARLY CAREER I

Childhood and College Training I
Early Assignments, U.S. Forest Service

Deputy Supervisor of the Wyoming-Bridger Forest 10

To Southern California II

Mapping for Hammond Lumber Company 13

Redwood Reforestation 14

Tax Research Bureau 18

Board of Equalization 25

Timber Taxation Exemption 28

The Black-Pratt Affair 31

Other State Foresters 37

ROLE OF CALIFORNIA FOREST PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION 41

Positions of Timberland Owners 41

The Reorganization of the State Board of Forestry 46

Writing the Forest Practice Act 48

Insect Control 53

Second Interim Committee 56
Acquisition of State Forest Lands

Results of Forest Practice Act in Timber Management 60

Difficulties in Relations with State Agencies 69

Fire Control 69

Forest Practice Inspections 73

Control Burning 74

Department of Fish and Game 75

Inroads on the Forest Practice Act 77

Centralization Threats 77

County Control Stymied 80

Timber Inventory in California 81

LOBBYING 85

The Beginning 85

Artie Samish and Other Key Figures 87

"Legitimate Graft" 90

Payment to Legislators 91

Patterns of Influence 95

Processes of Controlling Legislation 101

Lobbyists Working Together 103

Working the Assembly vs. Working the Senate:

Pre-reapportionment Days 104

Building Gratuities 106

Effects of Lobbying Legislation 109

Schofield's Relationship With Other Lobbies 113

Artie Samish I !3

Labor 116

State Agencies and Interns 118

Individual Senators 121

Success in Lobbying 125

APPENDIX A. The Black-Pratt Affair

APPENDIX B. Lobbyist Activities

APPENDIX C. California Forest Protective Association

EARLY CAREER

Childhood and College Training

Fry: May we start out and introduce you as a person? Where were you
born and where did you go to school?

WRS: I am a native of Illinois. I was born in Hudson, Illinois, on
April 5, 1894. The doctor at my birth was the father of Elbert
Hubbard, the famous Roycrofter (and agnostic). I was born on a
little farm next to the small town of Hudson, Illinois, just north
of Bloomington. My father was first a farmer, then a building con
tractor. We moved into town when I was about eight years old.

I went to public schools in Illinois, through high school.
From there I went to Montana, where my father had a ranch in the
Bear Paw Mountains, to spend the summer, and was planning to go
to school at the University of Montana to take forestry.

Fry: At what point did you decide that you were interested in forestry?

WRS: When I was a sophomore in high school, I had a very close friend
who was a junior in high school. He and I had read much of the
glamor of the U.S. Forest Service and its role in public service.
Do you remember the old picture of the ranger riding on the horse,
which was on the cover of a little Forest Service brochure? Well,
that was the inspiration. We decided that we would go to a school
of forestry. However, when he graduated from high school, his
father insisted that he stay on the home farm there in central
Illinois and become a farmer. So he lived and died a farmer.

I carried out my end of the pact by deciding that I would
still go to a forestry school. So I went west. My father's ranch
in Montana drew me out to the country where there were forests.
I did not like the setup of the schools in Montana because of the
division into three schools: mines at Butte, agriculture at Boze-
man, and the University at Missoula. Having looked it over, I
thought they couldn't have too much money to carry on their pro
gram well, so in 1912, I headed for the University of Washington
in Seattle, where they had a good school of forestry at the time.

On my way to Seattle, I stopped off in Spokane, Washington,
and having a little time, I took the electric train that ran from
Spokane to Moscow, Idaho, and visited the University of Idaho.
While looking around there, I met Dr. C. H. Shattuck, who was the
head of the Forestry School at Idaho. He persuaded me to stay at

1

WRS : Idaho for my forestry training, which I did.

There were four of us in the freshman class. Ours was the
third class to graduate in forestry, but I was the only one left
of the four when 1916 came along. In the meantime, during the
summer months of my school years, I worked for the U.S. Forest
Service as a fire guard in northern Idaho and on range and timber
reconnaissance work in southern Idaho and in Utah.

After graduation, I was employed on grazing reconnaissance in
southern Idaho. Then World War I came along and having had mili
tary training, I went into the officers' training camp at the Pre
sidio in San Francisco and eventually went overseas. I was trans
ferred to the Aviation Section, Signal Corps (now the Air Corps)
ground school at Berkeley. That was the occasion of my attendance
at the University of California.

Fry: Did you know Rex Black when you were working in reconnaissance in
Idaho?

WRS: No. I never knew Rex Black until I came to California years later
and when he was the secretary-manager of the California Forest
Protective Association. (He came from Michigan originally.)

Rex Black decided to go on a trip to South America and Europe
in 1929. I, at that time, was the secretary-supervisor of the
Humboldt Redwood Reforestation Association in Eureka, California.
The California Forest Protective Association hired me for a six
months' tour as the acting secretary-manager of the California
Forest Protective Association. I probably did a good job for them,
so when Rex Black went with the Weyerhaeuser Timber Company back
in St. Paul and resigned from the Forest Protective Association in
1943, I was hired by the directors of California Forest Protective
Association.

Fry: Let me return to your summertime work during college. Who was the
forest supervisor on your first job with the Forest Service?

WRS: The top man in the district office (they called the areas "districts"
then, and they call them "regions" now) in Missoula was Major Fenn,
an old-timer in the Forest Service. My immediate superior was a
Frenchman, or at least his first name was French: Rene McPherson.
He was the ranger on Tahoe district of the Selway National Forest,
and I became the forest guard during the summer after my first
year of school .

I spent two and one-half months all by myself in the Tahoe
ranger station on the Selway Forest. I used to make a patrol twelve
and one-half miles out in one direction to a fire lookout one day,
and the next day twelve and a half miles in the other direction to
another lookout.

V)

- o

> Uj

1 *

TV) [

I

Forestry Students and Faculty
University of Idaho-- 1913

WRS : The rest of it was wandering over the trail through timber,
picking huckleberries and canning them when I got home. I canned
huckleberries and had huckleberries all the rest of the following
year at school. I used to pack my supplies from the South Fork
of the Clearwater River, about three thousand feet difference in
elevation (a fifty to sixty pound pack). I would pack up from the
r i ver.

I didn't see a soul, but I used to sit on a chair in front of
the country telephone, which had about fifty subscribers on the one
line, and listen to the ladies tell about what fruit they had canned,
how many eggs they got, and everything else. My experience was in
teresting, but I was all alone.

I only had two forest fires. One 1 found after three days:
it turned out to be Indians picking berries who had built a camp-
fire. The next one was a real forest fire right on the edge of
the forest. I was sent a crew from the railroad to help me out.
I think the crew kept it going so they could keep the job, because
it never stopped and it wasn't until snow came that the fire was
put out. That was my first experience as a forest fire fighter.

Early Assignments, U.S. Forest Service

WRS: The next year I spent in grazing reconnaissance on the Caribou
Beaverhead National Forest, headquartered at Montpelier, Idaho.
At that time, grazing reconnaissance was a new project of the For
est Service. I worked with Clarence Forsling, Jim Jardi ne (whose
brother, William M. Jardine, was later Secretary of Agriculture),
Fred Douthitt, Clarence Favre, Homer Young, Jess Bedwe I I , Arthur
Stevens, and Leon Hurt. That party was really the original grass-
counters crew, and the Caribou was the location of the first pro
ject on which this type of reconnaissance took place.

Fry: What was it like to work with Mr. Forsling and Mr. Jardine?

WRS: They were splendid fellows. They came from the Middle West. They
had an education in botany from the University of Nebraska, and
they were excellent to work with. We were one big happy family
and we traveled around in a lumber wagon. We had a big old lumber
wagon with a big team of grey horses. We packed all our equipment
in the wagon. We could drive practically all over the lower part
of the Caribou National Forest which is in southern Idaho. We had
a tent camp, and we had our own cook and lived in the camp during
the summer.

Fry: They were fairly young too then, weren't they?

WRS: They were young; they were about my age. Herbert "Red" Johnson, a
member of the 1916 crew, went with Forsling to Alaska to manage the
caribou herd for the United States government. After they had been
there a couple of years, they finally went out on their own to raise
reindeer and caribou for meat for the Alaskans. Red Johnson stayed
up there; Forsling came back.

Red Johnson just recently retired. I see him once in a while.
He's living in San Francisco now. He lived on a small island in
the Aleutian chain, had a few little boats and the contract for
hauling of all the equipment for the DEW line, which was up above
the Arctic Circle. He became quite a Russian bibliophile. There
were all Russian people on the island; he was the only English-
speaking man on the island for years.

Red's about my age. We went to school together at the Uni
versity of Idaho although he was about three years behind me in
school .

Fry: Was he a history buff of the Russian people on the island?

WRS: The history of the Russian people there, Russian artifacts, etc.
When he came to California in the wintertime, he would go up to
Fort Ross and dig out old relics at Fort Ross. He has contributed
quite a bit historically to Fort Ross by being able to translate
and interpret some of the things that came out of the old Fort
diggings.

The following year (1915), I went with a reconnaissance party
down to the Sevier National Forest in southern Utah, where we were
going to do the same type of work.

Fry: Was this the same group of people?

WRS: A few of us, not all of us. Some of them stayed on the Caribou
and finished that up, and some of us went down there. At that
time, 1915, we took movie films for the Forest Service in Bryce
Canyon. We were probably the first white people who walked over
the entire Bryce Canyon. It's up and down with thousands of
several-hundred-feet-deep chasms. We surveyed it and they type-
mapped it for grazing.

They filmed a picture for publicity for the Forest Service
which is rather amusing. We had a picture of the party coming
into one of these beautiful settings with colored rocks, and set
ting up the camp, breaking camp and leaving. But we walked away
and left the fire burning, so they had to cut that out of the
picture. Daughter] There were some old-timers in the Forest
Service in the picture too.

The next summer (1916) and the year following, after I

Bryce Canyon, United States Forest Service Movie Project--1915

WRS: graduated from college, I went to the Cache National Forest, which
is in southern Idaho and northern Utah, on grazing and timber re
connaissance. At that time we used a pack train. The other time,
on the Sevier, we had used a lumber wagon. One interesting thing
was that we came out in November, because when all of our canned
fruit and vegetables froze, we thought it was about time to break
camp and come home. So we did.

In that group was Harry Malmsten. He was later an instructor
in forestry here at the University of California with Arthur Samp
son. (Sampson was at that time at Manti , Utah, at the Forest Ex
periment Station. He was a grass-counter too before he came to
the University of California to head up the grazing studies.)

Harry Malmsten now lives in Spokane, Washington.* Over the
years, I have seen him occasionally: sometimes he comes down
here, sometimes I go up there. He was one year after me at the
University of Idaho. He went to Washington State until the last
year and a ha I f and finished his four years of college at the
University of Idaho. Harry Malmsten was reticent and a retiring
sort of an individual.

I think he was always wary of me and the fact that I might
disclose some of the foolish things that we did when we were to
gether on the reconnaissance party. One such instance was when
we were returning to headquarters after being slowly frozen out.
We stopped at a little Mormon ranch. The rancher let us use a
vacant log cabin that he had, to stay in overnight. It had a cook
stove in it. Red Johnson went out scouting and found some nice
turkeys in the haystack. We rigged up a rock on a rope and wrung
the necks of three turkeys, and spent the rest of the night fry
ing turkeys and burning the feathers. It was too cold to sleep.

On the Caribou National Forest, there was a fellow in the
party named Arthur Stevens, who graduated from the University of
Idaho the year before me. He was a forester. I think he was a
dyspeptic; he was awfully hard to live with in camp. If you ever
want to know what a person is, live in camp with him and be closely
associated with him.

One of our customs was that when we moved camp, we had a
wrangler who moved the camp while we were all out mapping on a
plane table or a traverse board. We would know approximately where
the camp was going to be located that evening, so we would work all
day and then go into the new camp at night. I had gone out in one
direction, Stevens had gone out in another. I worked a little
later than usual, but along about six o'clock at night I reached

*H,irry M.ilmslen died in

Grazing Reconnaissance, Caribou National Forest
July 14, 1914

left to right: Douthitt, Scho'field, Bedwell, Favre,
Young, Stevens

Clear Creek Caribou National Forest, 1914
Bedwell, Red Johnson, Schofield extreme right

WRS: the creek on which I knew we were going to camp. I started up the
drainage and finally ran onto a trail (the trail of the pack train).
You could see by the way the horses' hoof marks were facing which
way the pack train had gone. I knew it must be our pack train.

I was heading up this faint trail when who should I meet com
ing down the other way but Arthur Stevens. Stevens was a difficult
individual and very positive. I said, "Where are you going, Steve?"
He said, "I'm going to camp."

I said, "So am I. Here's the trail going Lip^ to camp." He said,
"Oh no. This is the way to go." So he kept on going down. He was
following the trail but going in the wrong direction.

I went into camp, and Stevens showed up about an hour and a
half after I did in the camp. f_ laughter!! He finally got down to
where the trail crossed the little creek and then he began to follow
up the creek. It was difficult going up the creek. It took an hour
and a half after I got there before he reached camp. I got to camp
first and that was amusing. I don't think Arthur ever liked me
after that because I beat him into camp.

Fry: Because you knew how to read the hoof prints.

WRS: It just happened so and I didn't know why he didn't see it too.
He was quite convinced that he was going in the right direction.

Fry: Do you have any funny stories about other old-timers in the Forest
Service, Jardin or others?

WRS: An amusing incident took place in 1914, on the Caribou National
Forest. Six of the party, Clarence Farre, Jess Bedwell, Homer
Young, Clarence Forsling, Stevens and myself, dec! ded to shave our
heads as a Fourth of July celebration. The cook took a picture
of us sitting in a circle, and all we needed was a biq piece of
watermelon for each of us and it would have looked like a southern
Negro plantation scene.

Farre graduated from the University of Idaho in 1914. Follow
ing his work in grazing reconnaissance, he became supervisor of the
Humboldt National Forest in Nevada. Later when I was deputy super
visor of the Wyoming-Bridger in 1923-24, he was the forest super
visor.

Bedwell was a graduate of the University of Idaho several
years later than my class, and he became a Ph.D. in Forest Path
ology and spent many years with the U.S. Forest Service. He is
now retired and lives in Portland, Oregon.

Homer Young was a 1915 graduate in forestry from the Univer
sity of Idaho. He headed the grazing reconnaissance in District

WRS : One in Missoula, Montana, prior to World War I. He was killed in
the War and I replaced him in Region I after the War.

Stevens left forestry and was a procurement officer for the
military in World War II. I last saw him in Los Angeles in the
late MO's.

I have that picture of us all with our heads shaved. I also
have pictures of Bryce Canyon which were taken by the Forest Ser
vice. They are not colored because we didn't take color pictures
then. Bryce Canyon is one of the head drainages of the Grand Can
yon; Bryce Canyon drainage flows into Grand Canyon down in the
dixie country of Utah. Parowan is near the upper part of the can
yon, and below is the Kaibab National Forest where the Kaibab comes
in. I have some beautiful pictures of the formation there, al
though of course they are not in color.

Fry: The pictures would be good to file with the manuscript.

WRS: The people in the pictures are old-timers in the Forest Service
because that was fifty years ago.

Fry: It was real original reconnaissance.

WRS: Oh yes. I never wi I I forget the day we went down from the breaks
into the canyon to take a picture. I was riding a saddle horse (I
had a smart saddle horse). He didn't like me as a rider, and he
went between two trees where there was just enough room for him to
go through and not for me. He just brushed me off like nobody's
business. He scraped me right off the saddle.

That reminds me of a time in 1922 when I was deputy supervisor
of the Wyomi ng-Bri dger . C. N. Woods, who was the deputy District
Forester in the Ogden office of the Forest Service, and I were out
on a spring trip on horseback in the Wyomi ng-Bri dger Forest. As
we went down a trail, I was in the lead.

We came to a stream which was in spring flood, and I rode my
horse into the stream. The bottom had entirely gone out of the
creek. Immediately the horse began to swim, and so did I. I had
to swim to get out. C. N. Woods, behind me, laughed about it and
very cautiously got across another way.

He said, "Schofield, let me remind you of this old saying:
'First in wood and last in water.' When you're ridinq along a
trail, if you're first in 1he woods, that's fine — tree or brush
branches may flip back nnd hit rhe fellow who follows behind, so
be first in wood. But be last in water because the guy who is first
will discover whether it's deep or not."

I had another experience on the Wyoming-Sri dger. When I went
there as the Deputy Supervisor, the Supervisor had sent me out to

8

WRS : visit the ranger stations. I went to one ranger station in Star
Valley, which is just south of Yellowstone National Park, just
south of Afton, Wyoming. The ranger there was a Mormon. (I think
everybody in the valley except me was Mormon.)

I discovered that this ranger had been renting ranger stations
to schoolteachers and pocketing the money. He also had been sell
ing free-use permits for timber to the natives of the valley. He
sold fire tools to the natives of the valley, Forest Service tools.

It was my job to dig up the evidence and be the witness
against him in the federal court in Cheyenne, Wyoming. The only
happy thing about it was that they discharged him from the Forest
Service and put him on probation, so he didn't go to jail. But I
was as popular as a rattlesnake in Star Valley, Wyoming, because
the natives all stuck together. They had all been party to it too.
That was one unfortunate event that disturbed me.

Fry: You had a diversity of experience in your days in the Forest Service.
You did forest reconnaissance, you worked as a ranger, and in range
management ....

WRS: I did timber estimating, I did range reconnaissance, I did mapping,
and in 1920 I instituted the use of an ordinary post-card-sized
camera, setting it up on a plane table to photograph the area from
a high point. Then I put the pictures together to assist me in
drawing my contour maps. We had of course elevations scattered
around, but the pictures helped me considerably in drawing the
maps.

One time in 1914, Homer Young and I were together on top of
Caribou Peak, which is the highest peak in the Caribou National
Forest, when a thunderstorm came up on the Fourth of July. Boy,
it did snow and thunder and lightning. The lightning struck the
telescopic alidade which was on the plane table. (An alidade is
an instrument something I i ke a transit only it sits on the plane
table board and you draw lines from it.)

Homer Young was taking a sight through this when lightning
struck that aledade and knocked him colder than a turkey. He was
out for two hours, and here we were alone on top of the peak. It
kind of shocked me, but I was far enough away so it didn't actually
hit me. He was still breathing, and he finally came to. I was
able to get him tied on a pack horse and down from the top of the
mountain. There was no serious aftereffect. Ordinarily, it might
have killed him, I suppose.

That was quite an experience for me. I was all alone with a
man and I didn't know if he was alive or dead on the top of a moun
tain during a thunderstorm and snowstorm on the Fourth of July. It
was the first snowstorm I had ever experienced in the summertime.

9

WRS: When I left the Forest Service, I told the assistant District
Forester who was in charge of personnel that I hoped he would shoot
me i f I ever went back to the Forest Service again because they
weren't paying too much money. His name is Chet Morse, and he lives
in San Francisco. He's Grant Morse's father. He was one of many
of the old-timers in the Forest Service whom I knew and was associ
ated with.

Nevertheless, I do owe the Forest Service the credit for a
well-rounded education after I got out of school. I got practical
education and knowledge from the Forest Service which stood me in
good stead during the rest of my life.

Fry: Does this picture of your background pretty well bring you up to
World War I?

WRS: After World War I, when Homer Young had been killed, the Forest

Service people wanted me back. I stopped off in San Francisco in
1919. The District Forester wanted me to go on grazing reconnais
sance, in District 5 out of San Francisco. But I was undecided
what to do, and I went back to northern Montana.

They kept after me and after me, and finally I went to Mis-
sou I a to take over the grazing reconnaissance work out of the Dis
trict office in Missoula. I set up the reconnaissance work on the
Beaverhead National Forest, south of Butte with headquarters at
Dillon, Montana, and supervised that.

Another interesting thing that took place when I was there
in the Forest Service at Missoula was that there was a William
Schofield who was in the Bureau of Public Roads in Missoula and
working for the government. He was an older man than I. I was
detailed to the Ogden office for a month's work that winter, and
I left the same day that he left to go to Spokane, Washington, on
vacation; and I returned the same time that he returned.

But when he returned, he returned with a widow he had married
and her five children. I had an awful time explaining to my girl
friends in Missoula that it wasn't me.

Daughter]
Fry: This was primarily range management that you had after World War I?

WRS: This was range management until I finished there and left the

Forest Service in 1920. Then I ran for the office of County En
gineer of Blaine County, Montana, and was elected on account of
being a war veteran. Right after I was elected, I got married.
In 1920.

Fry: What was your wife's name?

Schofield, (Center) U.S. Forest Service, 1915

First Lieut. Schofield, Issoudon, France, 1918
Assigned to B79 Bombing Esquadrille, French Army

10

WRS: El izabeth McMi I Ian.

Fry: What was the name of your father-in-law?

WRS: W. R. McMillan. I've had two fathers-in-law; I have a second wife
now. W. R. McMillan was the superintendent at Hammond. He was
with the Hammond Lumber Company for many years. He came from
Michigan to Samoa about 1905 and was there for many years. Then
he became the head of the sales force in Chicago and New York,
and I i ved in Ch icago.

I served one and a half years as County Engineer, but I was
disappointed in the position and didn't like it very well. Blaine
County is in northern Montana, at Chinook.

Deputy Supervisor of the Wyoming-Bri dger Forest

WRS: I corresponded with R. H. Rutledge, District Forester in District
Four, to see if I could get back into the Forest Service. He was
the District Forester at Missoula when I had been there in 1919
and 1920, and later went to Ogden and became District Forester
down there. He immediately wrote back and told me, "Yes, we've
got just the opening for you as the Deputy Supervisor of the
Wyomi ng-Bri dger," which was a combination of the Wyoming Forest
and the Bridger Forest.

They were combined in World War I and held together as the
Wyomi ng-Bri dger, the largest national forest. Both of them to
taled better than three million acres of land. They were sepa
rated by a big valley. I think they call the Forest the "Bridger"
now.

I was in the administrative end of it. Soon after I went
there I built a bridge on the Wyoming-Bri dger. We had a stock
bridge across a stream, Fall Creek, which had broken down. It
was a bridge over which the stock, mostly sheep, had to cross to
get into the upper range in the summertime. The engineering staff
in the District Office had $6,000 allocated to build a bridge,
but they never got around to building it; and we were very anxious
to get this bridge completed so we could get the stock across with
out having to send them way around some roundabout way.

H.ivinq taken some courses in engineering besides my forestry,
I loM I ho supervisor, "I can build a bridge across 1here, and I'll
build if cheaper than they can." So without any plans, I built a
queen truss bridge across the river out of logs from the timber
that was near there, and the bridge is still there. This was in

1 1

WRS : 1922, and in 1962 I talked with a man who said that the bridge was
still in use. I built it for about $500 Daughter] but we used our

own timber.

Fry: In your grazing land management experience, did you get a lot of
political experience that has stood you in good stead since?

WRS: From a political standpoint, my administrative work with the For
est Service was where I gained political experience. It was quite
difficult dealing with the grazers on the national forest. In the
reconnaissance work we didn't have to use our native ability in
contacting the public. We worked alone; we had specific things to
do. But the administrative work that I did in District One (Montana)
served me in good stead, I'm sure.

Add the fact that following that, I became a politician and ran
for the office of County Engineer which helped me considerably.
Maybe I had the native ability to pick it up. When I substituted
for Rex Black as head of the California Forest Protective Associa
tion in 1929, I had to exert a certain amount of political ingenuity
in order to handle that work. So I think it too served me in good
stead.

Fry: How long did you stay on the Wyoming-Bridger National Forest?

WRS: I went down there in April, and I was there a year and a half. I
left in the winter of 1923. To sum it up, I had gone from World
War I to District One and the Beaverhead National Forest. From
District One, I went to Chinook, Montana, where I ran for County
Engineer. Then I went to the Wyoming-Bridger Forest.

To Southern California

WRS: When I left the Wyoming-Bridger, I went into, of all things, sell
ing insurance and bonds.

There was another humorous incident that took place when I
moved to Wyoming. I had a Model A Ford with a Ruckstell axle that
could almost climb a telephone pole. It had power. My family
went to California to be with my wife's parents while I spent the
summer in Wyoming alone. I was to get a place to live and they
were to join me in the fall.

When I moved down from northern Montana, I h>id this Model A
Ford just pncked to the top. All the way down from Mutte, I had
heard the shory .ibout ihe big white team of horses tti.it was wait
ing to pull you through the mud hole on the Idaho st.jlo line. I

12

WRS: got down there and there was a long string of people waiting to be
pulled through, from both sides of the mud hole. It seems that the
man who owned the team of white horses lived in Idaho, and the mud
hole was in Montana. He would charge you five dollars for pulling
you through if you would wait. If you didn't wait, he would charge
you fifteen dollars if you got stuck and he had to go out and pull
you out of the middle.

Here was this long string of cars, and me being young and
smart, 1 thought I'd outsmart them. It looked like it was going
to be dark before I'd get through this mud hole anyway. So I
started off up-country over the foothills there and through ranches
to go around the mud hole.

I went way back in there, and all of a sudden I hit an alkali
spot and my car went down clear up to the hubs. I tore down about
ten feet of fence to get the posts to pry myself out. With that
car loaded as it was, I finally got out and went back and took my
turn in line and paid the five dollars.

Fry: Did you have roads when you began to go around the mud hole, or
did you go cross-country?

WRS: No, I just went cross-country.

Fry: What made you leave the Forest Service?

WRS: I left the Forest Service primarily because I couldn't see too

much of a future for me. It was going to be a long wait; promo
tions were very slow in the Forest Service. Salaries were not
very good. After I left, they started boosting the salaries and
promotions were going faster, but I was already out.

Fry: You started selling insurance right after you left the Wyoming-
Bri dger?

WRS: Yes, and I was too soft-hearted to sell insurance and bonds. I'd
have my prospect already hooked, and then I'd let him off the hook
because I got sympathetic with him and didn't think he should take
on too much of an investment. So I didn't do too well as an in
surance salesman. The insurance business is the highest selling
game one could possibly go into.

In late 1923, I went down to Long Beach, California, and en
gaged in the contracting business. At that time, my father was
in the contracting business in that area. My father and I built
about half of the subdivision known as Castle Park.

Then the bottom fell out of the real estate market. We had
about ten houses on our hands that we owned, and the only way we
could get anything out of them at all was to rent them, which is
thft poorest th i nq you can do in real estate.

13

Mapping for Hammond Lumber Company

WRS : In the meantime, my father-in-law, who was the manager at the

Hammond Lumber Company in Samoa, California, just across the bay
from Eureka, California, knew that a young man who had started to
make a typographic map of all of the Hammond timber land, wasn't
doing too well. He was costing them too much money.

My father-in-law, knowing my experience with the Forest Service
in mapping, talked to Mr. Peed, who was the logging superintendent,
about me and they hired me. In 1924, I moved my family from south
ern California up to Humboldt County without a contract and no as
surance of how much money I was going to get for my job. We moved
into a very comfortable place in Samoa, a company-owned town.

I went out into the woods. After the first month that I had
been on the job, I was able to cut down the expense of typographic
mapping from about three dollars an acre to seventy-two cents an
acre, for which I was rewarded by a substantial increase in salary.
I instituted several innovations that I had used with the Forest
Service.

Fry: Did you use your camera technique?

WRS: That, plus the fact that I put into operation other procedures.

We had four crews of three men each: a brush cutter, a head chain-
man, and a transit man. The brush cutter would go ahead and cut
the brush in order to open up a sight along the line of the tra
verse. In the redwood region there is a lot of brush to be cut.
We ran from one control line on top of the ridge to a control line
in the drainage at the bottom.

One night one crew got stuck a little later than usual, didn't
get to the control line, and it got dark on them. It just hap
pened that one of the boys had a flashlight on him, so the brush
cutter took the flashlight. He went ahead, not cutting any brush
at all, with the flashlight. The man with the transit could sight
on the beam from the flashlight.

Fry: I see. Because it's a straight beam.

WRS: He would sight on the light at eye level, and would thus get a

reading of the angle on that light. So that suggested doing away
entirely with the services of the brush cutter. We could go a full
chain length through the brush by using the flashlight, even in the
daytime. That is the first time a flashlight was ever used in that
work.

Ralph Hall, who retired from the School of Forestry at Berkeley,
would remember that. He was on the party with us at that time. He

14

WRS: is the secretary of the Northern California section of the Society
of American Foresters and lives in Orinda. He was one of a group
of boys from Syracuse University who were in the party that I was
di recti ng.

Fry:
WRS:

It saved us a great deal of money, not having that extra man
for brush cutting. And we went a lot faster. I ran the survey
work during the remainder of that summer. The second summer I did
the same thing. I directed the survey on most of the holdings of
the Hammond Lumber Company, and from that made a topographic map
of the Company holdings.

Was this written up as a new technique at the time?

Yes, it was in the Journal of Forestry. Somebody happened on to
the technique many years later and wrote it up as something new.
Ralph Hall wrote to the Journal of Forestry that we had instituted
it in Humboldt County many years before and it was not a new thing
at all.

In the winter, after we came in from the field work, I worked
in the engineering office of the Hammond Lumber Company doing en
gineering work. I designed a new log dump for the mill, where they
moved the flat cars with logs on a tilted track, and then with a
Jill poke would push them off the dump into the water of the bay
to be transported to the sawmill. I designed and built the log
dump for the Hammond Lumber Company. The dump was an elevated
and tilted track that the car was spotted on.

After the second year out in the woods, they made me the fire
chief of the Company fire department. We had our own volunteer
fire department at the mill. My vehicle for transportation was a
bicycle. I used to ride all over the plant and everywhere in Samoa
on a bicycle. We had our fire equipment of course — our hose carts
and chemical engines. Most of my time was spent as the fire chief,
supplemented with some plant engineering work.

Redwood Reforestation, 1928-1930

WRS: I moved from Hammonds into the Redwood Reforestation Association
planting program, the planting of redwoods, primarily because I
had been working for the logging superintendent of the Hammond
Lumber Company, Mr. W. W. Peed, who was very active in the Redwood
Reforestation Association. We had a big nursery in Sc-otia which
was operated by Pacific Lumber Company. They grew several million
seedlings annually.

Each company belonging to the Reforestation Association took

* See last item in appendices, William Schofie Id, "Reforestation
Humbolt Redwood Belt". Journal of Forestrv. Feb. 1929

in the

15

WRS : hundreds of thousands of these seedlings and hired planting crews
to plant them in the winter and spring of the year. Some of the
planting stock were one-year-old seedlings, some one-year seedlings
and one-year transplants; some were two-year seedlings and one-year
transplants. These trees were planted on the cutover land. We
planted thousands of acres of cutover land in Humboldt County.

Simultaneous with our planting in Humboldt County, there was a
nursery operated by the Union Lumber Company in Mendocino County.
Walker Til ley, a forester, was chief of the crew that did the work
in Mendocino County. They operated much the same as we did in Hum
boldt County.

Fry: How would you compare those two? Did you get identical results?

WRS: No, we didn't, primarily because we were doing it without any rhyme
or reason, planting them eight feet apart over hill and dale, sun
shine and shadows, stumps and no stumps. There were different ele
vations, different soil conditions, different species.

The result was that we got not too good of a survival count
over the years. The first two years after planting they were fine.
I have always said that the Forest Service brags about their sur
vival count from planting that they do in the National Forest; but
they better wait five years before they start counting their chic
kens, because over a period of five years you lose many of them.

One reason why we lost so many of them was that some of these
"bi ndle-sti f fs" who planted the trees didn't know or care anything
about the planting program. They would take a bundle of five hun
dred trees and just stuff them in an old empty stump. I'd find
them there the year following, whole bundles of them all wrapped up
that were never planted at all.

Another reason was that the companies were grazing cattle over
these cutover lands and they would tramp them out, plus the wild
life which browsed or tramped them out. Fireweed and all the other
brush that would grow up in cutover land made it difficult for their
survi va I .

However, I can take anybody over certain areas of the Hammond
lands, the Little River lands, the old Northern Redwood lands, and
show them plantations where there are trees that are better than
three feet in diameter that we planted some forty years ago. They
survived and made good stands, but those were few and far between.

Fry: Did you think that the Union Lumber Company nursery had better
results?

WRS: No, they had the same problems that we had. They were just plant
ing hit-or-miss with different species. Our best planting probably
was on excellent soil in good places located in the Pacific Lumber

16

WRS: Company holdings. We had one of the best stands of survival on the
Eel River. After it had been there for about seven years, it was
completely swept by fire and the young plantation was destroyed.
There are some areas that are still there that we planted at that
time.

The impetus on the companies to plant was not so much the idea
of planting for timber to be grown and to be used in the years to
come as it was to offset the propaganda that was being circulated
advocating the use of pine rather than cutting the redwoods. At
that time there was a big furor all over the United States about
the cutting of redwoods.

Fry: This was sort of a Save-the-Redwoods League movement?

WRS: It was, and the League was primarily in on it. To offset the un
favorable publicity and the false publicity that went out (and is
still going out) relative to whether redwoods grow and so forth,
the planting program was created. It was created purely to offset
this publicity in the minds of most.

There were some sincere company plantings. The Little River
Redwood Company perhaps was more sincere in their planting than
some of the others, I can't say how much. But I will say the main
reason was to gain favorable publicity. We were planting four or
five trees for every tree that was cut. That was really the pur
pose of it.

On account of the unsuccessful survival that we had, when
the lean years began to come in the industry, the planting was one
of the things that they abandoned. Neither nursery is any longer
in existence. The planting was done, but some of the trees that
we planted are still growing.

Fry: We don't have a clear picture of your role in this.

WRS: I was the Secretary-Supervisor of the Humboldt Redwood Reforesta
tion Association.

Fry: Was this a dual type of job, requiring both public relations and a
knowledge of forestry?

WRS: No, we carried on the planting program primarily.

In those days they had voluntary rangers for the State, and I
was a voluntary forest ranger for the State in Humboldt County. I
had a badge and a siren and everything. We looked after fires on
private land, supplementing the very meager crews that the State
had at that time. We had our own fire organizations within the
various companies too.

Of course, at that same time the California Forest Protective

17

WRS : Association was doing a similar job. As a matter of fact, the Cali
fornia Forest Protective Association at one time received better
than half of the Clarke-McNary money, which came to the State of
California, in compensation for the amount of fire prevention and
fire suppression costs for the work that was done by the individual
companies in the Association.

The money was apportioned between the State Division of Forestry
and the Association, and the latter got the bulk of it. Later on,
the State decided to take over the whole thing, so the C.F.P.A. lost
out entirely in its fire suppression and fire prevention reimburse
ments. Nevertheless, the C.F.P.A. carried on as they had always
done with fire suppression and fire prevention work, but without
being compensated, without the Clarke-McNary funds.

Fry: The Clarke-McNary fund was used to help support the payment ....

WRS: It reimbursed us in part for crews, equipment, and everything that
we had expended. We had a real fire department in the C.F.P.A. for
the private owners. This was used, of course, both publtcly and
privately and for many years.

Fry: Let me back up a minute. You were the volunteer fireman for the
State and for Humboldt County at the same time that you were the
Supervisor and Secretary of the Redwood Reforestation Association?

WRS: Yes. Then I resigned that and entered into planning commission

work for Humboldt County. I still directed the office of the Re
forestation Association while in my position as engineer for the
Planning Commission of Humboldt County, until I went with the
State Board of Egual i zation.

Fry: You were primarily a county employee?
WRS: That's right.

Fry: You had been in the Redwood Reforestation Association from 1928 to
1931, and that brings us up to 1929-1931 when you were a planning
engineer. Does that encompass land planning?

WRS: In California, they set up a law which required that each county
have a planning commission. The Board of Supervisors were to ap
point a planning commission, and this planning commission's job was
to develop the economic promotion program of the county in the way
of locating roads and all orderly planning for the development of
the county.

It was rather a thankless job because the county supervisors
were resentful of the fact that the planning commission told them
what to do. They were so piqued that one of the strong leaders of
the Board of Supervisors in the second year, in order to curb the

William Schofield

County Planning Engineer and Secretary
Humbolt County, California, Planning
Commission- -19 30

18

WRS: planning commission, refused to appropriate money for the financing
of the planning commission. So it then was a planning commission
i n name on ly .

Fry: Was this your second year?

WRS: Yes, I worked for five months for nothing. Finally on that basis,
I moved and took a research job with the State. I later was able
to collect the back pay. The man who was responsible for urging
me to quit the planning commission became, before he died, one of
my closest friends.

Fry: Who was that?

WRS: George Cole, a long-time supervisor of Humboldt County, a remark
able and, I think, a very efficient supervisor in Humboldt County.

Tax Research Bureau

Fry: So in 1931 you moved to Sacramento?

WRS: 1931 was the legislative year. At that time, the Legislature met
biennially, every odd year. The Legislature approved a budget for
two years and performed all business in the time that was allotted
them on these odd years. Later on they changed the law so that the
odd year became the unlimited session and the even year a budget
session plus whatever the Governor might put on special call. This
change was made in the Constitution, so that the Legislature passed
a yearly budget instead of one for two years.

The Legislature was meeting in the spring of 1931, when I went
down and joined those who were promoting the legislation setting
up the Tax Research Bureau; that was the reason I got appointed to
the Bureau.

Fry: Was this your first work with the Legislature?

WRS: That was my first work with the Legislature, in 1931. I was with
the Tax Research Bureau for two years. After we made our report*
to the Legislature in 1933, the Legislature dissolved the Bureau.

*Schofield, William R., Report on Timber Taxation in the State
of California, California Tax Research Bureau, November I, 1932;
mimeographed, 48 pp.

19
Fry: What was the purpose of the Tax Research Bureau?

WRS : The early Thirties was quite a depressed time throughout the United
States. It was the same in California. The landowners and the com
mon taxpayers were laboring under quite a severe tax load. The de
mand for schools was growing and growing. The question was, how were
they going to finance such a program and where did inequity exist?

At that time the State's financing was from the gross receipts
tax on the public utilities, such as the electrical companies, the
gas companies, the railroads, the telephone company, and so forth.
That was the source of revenue for State purposes added to whatever
licensing there was in existence at the time.

There was and still is a law that the State has the privilege
of levying an ad valorem tax, which is levied according to the value
of the common property throughout the State. But only occasionally
has it been invoked. Once they did it to finance the Panama Pacific
Exposition in 1915, and there was one other occasion when there was
a levy made.

The greatest need was for the financing locally from the local
tax base and for the local work, particularly the schools. A study
was made of the existing tax system — both the ad valorem tax on a
local basis and the gross receipts tax, and how~~they compared with
one another — to determine the relationship between the amount the
utilities were paying and the amount the counties were receiving.

How could relief be given the counties in order to take care
of this added educational load which they had? So the Tax Research
Bureau was created.

We had an appropriation of $150,000, which was quite a bit in
those days. The Tax Research Bureau was administered by a director,
Earl Lee Kelly, a real estate man who lived in Redding. He was ap
pointed head of the Tax Research Bureau. He later became the di
rector of Public Works; after that, he became a vice president of
the Bank of America. He is now dead. He was quite a public servant.
He headed it, but the direction was through the State Board of Equali
zation, the State Controller, and the Director of Finance.

The State Controller was an ex-officio member of the State
Board of Equalization. The Director of Finance then was Rolland
Vandegrift, probably one of the smartest men with a pencil that I
have ever known i n my life. He came from Utah, and he was really
a whiz. He, in my estimation, was the best Director of Finance, un
less it was John Pierce, who was the first head of the Bay Area
Rapid Transit system and now has dropped down to being financial
expert.

Vandeqrift was extra smart. Van really was the man who ran
the State deal. As an aside, not to be made general I y known, I think

20

WRS : one of the reasons why I was able to get into the Tax Research Bu
reau was that he was a fraternity brother of my brother. My brother
is a doctor and went to school here at the University of California.
Vandegrift went to school at Cal, and they were both members of
Acacia fraternity. I knew Vandegrift even when I was in the Ground
School here at Berkeley during World War I, because he was in the
house with my brother. That association formed a mutual relation
ship that stood me in good stead.

The direction was really by the Director of Finance and the
Board of Equalization. The Board was quite active; of course, they
had four other members besides the Controller. They really con
trolled it, but Vandegrift was the smartest of them all, and he was
the man they looked up to. The Board members were elected officials
and some of them didn't know too much about what they were doing in
their jobs. They didn't have any particular qualifications other
than the fact that they got elected. Vandegrift was a real account
ant and one of the smartest men that had ever served the State of
Ca I i fornia.

The Bureau was set up with so-called experts (I shouldn't call
myself an expert) familiar with various kinds of ownership of tax
able property, and a survey was made. I made the first valuation
of private timber lands that was ever made in the State of Cali
fornia. I went to every timber county in the State. My records,
I think, are still as accurate as anyone's.

Fry: Did you take this from company records?

WRS: Yes. That is another thing that served me in good stead. When I

went to work for the Board of Equalization, I had served six months
as the secretary-manager of the California Forest Protective As
sociation, which is the association of private timber ownership.
(I was filling in for Rex Black.)

I was able, through my promise that any information that I
received from them (and they were very jealous of their ownership
and knowledge of what they had in the way of stands and acreage)
was never to become the property of the State but rather always to
be mine, to gain access to their private cruises. Their cruises,
which had never before been made available to anyone, were made
aval lab le to me.

I was a State employee. I promised them, and my word was
always kept, that the information was always to be only mine, and
I still have that information. I was to use the information only
collectively, like ownerships of the entire county put together,
and to designate the total species volume in the county; but I
couldn't single out one particular company and say that the Ham
mond Lumber Company had so many acres, and so much timber volume
per acre, and so forth. I couldn't say that, but collectively I
could use the information in my report, which served just as well

21

WRS: as far as the State was concerned. I had access to their records
carte blanche, which was an unusual thing. The timber owners were
very jealous of all their records, but I kept my word and did not
disclose the confidential material. I was censured somewhat when
I left the Board of Equalization because I took many of these re
cords with me, but I was keeping my word to the timber owners. All
that was available was in the Tax Research Bureau report in 1932,
an over-all picture. All the complete statistical data that I had,
I kept to myse I f .

I made a complete survey of the taxation of timberlands. I
won't say that I was on every foot of the timber! and in every county
because I wasn't; I didn't have the time. But I did some very good
sampling, something that had never been done before. As far as the
timber specifically was concerned, there was a woeful lack of know
ledge of timber on the part of the taxing authorities, locally and
statewi de.

They were using various forms of timber taxation. Del Norte
County at that time had a county cruise, which they assessed on the
cruise basis. There were only about two counties in the State that
had anywhere near the semblance of a cruise.

Fry: Why was that?

WRS: It was quite difficult information to get, because it was very ex
pensive to make a cruise and the timber owners did not furnish their
records. There was a fellow who set up a deal with some of the
counties to make a cruise of all their timber and to allocate it to
its location. He did some funny things. As a matter of fact, he
went to jail for practicing abortion, of all things. He inveigled
about three counties into giving him a contract to map all their
timber.

Fry: Were you able to use these cruises?

WRS: Oh yes.

Fry: Was this Del Norte?

WRS: No. Del Norte had their own cruise made by another man. You can
find the information in the report of the Tax Research Bureau of
1932 as to what counties had cruises. Some of them merely assessed
their timber on an acreage basis — so much an acre; however, they
did govern the rate by the location of the acreage, quality, and
quantity, how near it was to transportation or how near it was to
the mill, the accessibility.

Fry: And this influenced the assessment?

WRS: Yes. In Humboldt County they had a group of citizens who put to
gether a map for the assessor. They mapped out the whole county:

22

WRS: this was zone so-and-so, that was another zone, and so forth. The
assessor used that for years as the basis of his assessment of tim
ber. Some of them, as I said, went on an acreage basis.

Some of them hadn't the slightest idea of what they had. A
rather amusing thing happened one day when I was in the assessor's
office in Susanville. A man came in and said to the assessor, "I
want a reduction in my assessment on such-and-such a piece of land."
The assessor said, "Well, what do you want the reduction for?"

He said, "Well, I had timber on it, but I cut the timber off."
The assessor looked it up and found that he never had assessed it
for timber at all. All the time the assessor thought it was just
grazing land. They were woefully lacking in knowledge of what was
on the land.

I determined what the assessment ratio was and the relation
ship of the assessment of timber-lands with agricultural lands and
to city and business lands. The information is all in the report.
The University has six copies of the 1932 report. I have a more
detailed report of my survey in a mimeographed form which was my
report to the Bureau.* The final printed report was somewhat con
densed from the detai led one.

I was one of two who proofread that whole Tax Research Bureau
report; that's where I became a proofreader. I'm as versatile as
can be. Daughter] I can read a page and almost by instinct I
can pick out a misspelled work by proofreading; the errors seem

to jump up at me.

From this report came the action of the Legislature in 1933
which was known as the Ri ley-Stewart Plan. Ri ley was the State
Controller, and Stewart was a member of the Board of Equalization.
However, it was A.C.A. #30 (Assembly Constitutional Amendment #30)
which was voted on by the people, which changed the form of taxa
tion of utility property from the gross receipts tax, setting up
procedure whereby the State was to determine the assessed value of
utility property and allocate back to the county the assessed value
of the utility properties in the county.

The county, in turn, would apply the tax rates to the assessed
value the same as applied to assessment made by the county assessor.
As a result, the counties in which utility property was located
received quite a bonus, which was supposed to be used for school
purposes. It was quite a savings, particularly in some of the
large timber counties. They were just rolling in wealth, but with
in three years the county supervisors had absorbed all that tax sav
ing by increased expenditures.

*See Appendix, Bancroft Library copy of this transcript.

23

WRS: Simultaneous with this arrangement, there was also instituted
a sales tax of three percent, which was reduced later to two and a
half percent, and an income tax. The agricultural people — the Grange
and the Farm Bureau — insisted that if a sales tax was going to be in
stituted on personal property, an income tax be instituted simultane
ously. From the sales tax and from the State income tax came the
major portion of the income for State purposes. The utility property
was no longer an asset of the State. It became a part of the tax
base of the counties.

That is the setup we have today. There has been a fluctuation
and changing of the sales tax. Now we have authorization that cities
can levy a sales tax which is tacked onto the State sales tax, so
that's the reason why you pay a sales tax for the State and a one
percent or more sales tax for most of the cities.

Fry: This, then, was really a great asset to the timber growers who were
kind of up against it just then?

WRS: Yes, it was a life-saver for property owners.
Fry: They could reduce their local taxes?

WRS: Their local tax was reduced. There was a spreading out of a base

on which taxes are levied, and there is now a broader base on which
a levy can be made. But the constant demands of the public for more
and more public services has absorbed that many times over.

Since that time, there was an interim committee formed in the
Assembly which was trying to equalize things again, but the utility
people were not too happy over it because in the long run they paid
more money. They went along with it to begin with.

Fry: They didn't fight it at first?

WRS: No, they didn't, but it developed into something more than they ex
pected. They didn't oppose it. There were some people who were
violently opposed to that setup. I debated with ex-Governor Young
on the constitutional amendment, I remember, down in Washington
School District in Alameda County one night. C. C. Young was stump
ing the State opposing the sales tax.

Fry: Just the sales tax but not the income tax?

WRS: No, he wasn't opposing the income tax. He was opposing the consti
tutional amendment. He wasn't really opposing the sales tax. What
he was opposing was the change from gross receipts tax because the
gross receipts tax historically goes way back to the King tax bill,
which was the original gross receipts tax. He thoughl the tax
should be kept on the same basis.

24

WRS: He was a little bit dubious, I guess; having been Governor,
he was afraid that the State was going to suffer from a financial
income standpoint. He was opposed to it on that basis. I don't
think the poor Governor understood exactly all that it was sup
posed to do, because he wasn't too close to the picture, but they
used him because of his political prestige.

Fry: 1 guess this really pulled the State out of its financial difficulties,

WRS: Yes, it did. It was fantastic what the sales tax produced in the
way of income, far beyond the imagination of the people who were
instrumental in setting it up.

I remember when they set up the sales tax after they had the
authorization. In the first two months of the collections, every
one wanted to know how much it was. Every newspaperman was trying
to get a scoop on the others.

The result of trying to add the first return the way it was
done, showed up six months after. Another employee and I found
better than a quarter million dollars' worth of checks in the back
of stenographers' chairs, in drawers, scattered all over, or where
they just disappeared in files. Some were even found a year and
a half afterwards. Of course, by that time some of the checks
weren't any good at all. The result was that the manager of the
Sales Tax Division at the time got fired.

Fry: Because the system for collection was so poor?

WRS: It happened because nobody was taking account of the slipshod count.
They were so busy opening up these envelopes and we don't know how
many were thrown away. They might have been thrown in the waste-
basket. It was a sad thing.

We estimated at that time — and this will show you what good
estimates we can make — that there would only be seventy-five people
working for the sales tax in the State of California, just seventy-
five people. Now look at it — thousands. It was an interesting
deve lopment.

Fortunately, it was a painless sort of income, and it did help
the property owners. It's something that's here to stay. Of course
now we have some forty-two states which have a sales tax; only a few
are left that don't have one. It's a good system, and California
has an excellent system of collection now.

Fry: They don't lose checks anymore?

C I aughterU
WRS: No. They now employ auditors who even spend time in Chicago and

25

WRS: and New York with out-of-state business. They make audits and some
of them live back there and do yearlong auditing. Hundreds of
thousands of dollars in sales and use taxes are brought in this way.
Since then they have added the use tax with the sales tax, and the
income is even greater. If you buy something out-of-state for use
in California, then you pay a tax on it.

They get you going and coming on all of these things. It is
something that will never be abandoned. Even so, since that time
there have been other sources of revenue developed for the State.
The State gets a lot of income from bank, corporation and franchise
taxes.

Fry: As this was being voted on, I gather that you were also involved in
the campaign.

WRS: I was. Just for the period of time of the campaign, I was not work
ing for the State of California. I was working for the Common Prop
erty Taxpayers Association. They hired me to stump the State for
that.

Board of Equalization

Fry: Was your activity largely in the form of speeches, or did you do
more than that?

WRS: I made speeches and also lined up individuals for support through
out the State. When I went back to work for the State, I set up a
rather euphonious but perhaps a phony title. For the Board of Equali
zation, I was "Assistant to the Executive Secretary," and I was do
ing the engineering work.

I had crossed swords with the then controller, Ray L. Riley.
He, by manipulation, succeeded in ousting the man who had been chair
man of the State Board of Equalization for many, many years, some
thirty years. He went in as chairman himself. He controlled the
votes of the Board so that he got to be chairman.

His first act after becoming chairman was to fire three people.
One of them was Bill Schofield, one of them was Clem Whitaker, and
the other was El wood Squires, the assistant secretary of the Board.

Fry: Was Clem Whitaker the same one who started the public relations
firm in San Francisco?

WRS: Yes. Clem Whitaker stayed fired and set up the public relations

(inn which did a fabulous job for the American Medical Association,

26

WRS : opposing medical insurance in the Fifties.
Fry: Right after Whitaker was fired, he ran the campaign for Ri ley?

WRS: No, he ran Ray Ri ley's campaign before, and Ray Riley reneged on
financial obligations that Clem Whitaker had obligated for him.
They Ray Riley withdrew from the governor's race and left all these
bills. He left poor old Clem Whitaker trying to collect for these
little newspapers in the country towns, whose services he had engaged.
Ray just had it in for Clem Whitaker.

Ray Riley had a little different deal with me. I had made an
unfortunate observation to Ray Riley one time. We were sitting in
the meeting in the Equalization Board room, and I made a remark to
him, that I had learned that he had been a pharmacist in Dillon,
Montana, at the time that I was with the U.S. Forest Service and
headquartered in Dillon.

Those were the days of prohibition. He had gotten into some
nefarious deal and left Dillon between dark and daylight. I had
heard that he had come from Dillon, Montana; it wasn't any secret.
So I mentioned to him in a friendly talk (we had been good friends)
something about the fact that I had lived in Dillon, Montana, at
such-and-such a time, and that he had also been there at that time.
I think that Ray Riley was afraid that I knew more than I had said
about why he had left Dillon, so he was bound to get me, and he did.

But within a half hour after I was fired, I was hired by Fred
Stewart, a Board member, as the liquor chief for the Stockton Dis
trict of the Board of Equalization. That's when they were setting
up the liquor control too. I served as liquor chief of the Stock
ton District for five months.

Then the Board member from the Northern District wanted some
body to run the liquor district at Santa Rosa. He asked Fred Stewart
if he could borrow me to take over the liquor control of the north
coast district. That's where I had a ball. I was a liquor chief,
making raids and all kinds of things. It was a lot of fun.

When I went as liquor chief to Stockton, they changed the
Board of Equalization personnel from appointive to Civil Service
positions. Some of them were "blanketed in" on that basis, but in
view of the fact that I had been doing some engineering work on
another job and had then been appointed liquor chief, Ray Riley, who
was still the chairman, said that I had to take the examination for
liquor chief, which I did.

Ray Riley was also a member of the personnel board, as was Fred
Wood, who was the Legislative Counsel and later became a judge, and
is now dead. Fred Wood lived in Berkeley and was a great friend of
mine. At one of the meetings right after I had taken the examination,

27

WRS: Ri ley said, "Well, Schofield doesn't have to take the examination,"
(I had already taken it and passed it) "because the duties of a
liquor chief were similar to that of a forest engineer." How one
could reconcile that I don't know. But his remark was a matter of
record as far as Fred Wood was concerned.

Fred was my close friend and always fought to get me back into
my old position with the Board. He persisted, and finally they
overthrew Ray Ri ley and got Dick Collins back in again as chair
man. Then the question was reinstating me in Civil Service as a
valuation engineer with the Board of Equalization.

Ray Ri ley had always said, "over my dead body," but Fred Wood
remembered what he had said. He said, "It works both ways: if the
duties of a liquor chief are similar to those of an engineer, then
the duties of an engineer are similar to those of a liquor chief."
So I got back to my old job with the State Board of Equalization.

One night we set up the Division of Assessments Standards and
the Division of Research and Statistics in the Board of Equaliza
tion. Three of us set it up: myself, John Keith, and DeWitt
Krueger, who is now one of the directors of the East Bay Municipal
Utilities District and also is associated as a tax man for the Safe
way Stores. He was to become the director of Research and Statis
tics. John Keith was to be the head of the Assessments Standards
Division, and I was to be the supernumerary who worked behind the
scenes, as a Senior Valuation Engineer.

Fry: Didn't this have to be legislated?

WRS: No, it was done within the Board. The Board set it up. This was
1933. Later on, after twelve years with the State Board, I was
picked to go to the California Forest Protective Association.
About the same time, DeWitt Krueger went with the Safeway people.

Fry: Once Keith and Krueger were working, what were your main duties?

WRS: Then I was the "bird dog" for the Board when the Legislature was
meeting. I was doing all the legislative contact work. Besides
that, when the Legislature wasn't meeting, I was helping in the
inter-county equalization, primarily dealing with timber and tim
ber evaluation and keeping up-to-date the record of timber cut.

Fry: It sounds like you were a one-man computer. What does "bird-dogging"
mean?

WRS: It means digging things out, doing errands, and making public con
tact with the legislators for this individual member.

Fry: This put you in touch with the timbermen in all the counties?

28

WRS: Yes, that's right. That's one reason why it wasn't hard for Rex

Black to say, "Well, Bill Schofield would make a good successor to
me in the California Forest Protective Association."

Timber Taxation Exemption

Fry: During the time that you were working for the State Board of Equali
zation, were you also involved in helping legislation that would
enable the various fire plans to go into effect in the State, in
the I930's and early 40's?

WRS: No. The State Board of Equalization was not interested in that.
The members' interest was only in the tax issues.

Fry: I thought maybe with your interest as a forester, you might have
helped a I ittle.

WRS: Well, I may have given my opinion, but I didn't take an active
part. Mine was purely from the tax standpoint.

Fry: There haven't been any great changes in taxes that would affect
forest landowners, have there?

WRS: We [C.F.P.A.] saw to it that there weren't. There were many at
tempts made. Many times we fought a severance tax on timber or
natural resources. In my time, a little over nineteen years, dur
ing three legislative sessions we fought severance taxes. Even
last year there was another attempt for a severance tax, but we
were able to overcome that.

Many pieces of legislation were just taken off the top of some
body's head with no thought to it at all, so we were able to control;
we did pretty well. By and large, we have done pretty well, but
it's getting more difficult.

Fry: Were the timber owners happy with the 1926 tax law, Article 13,
Section 12 3/4?*

WRS: Well, that was their bill originally.

Fry: They remained content with this through the Thirties while you
were on the State Board of Equalization?

WRS: Yes. Originally, prior to the passage of this bill, Senator John
son, who was the author of this bill of 1926 that was voted on by

*See Appendix.

29

WRS: the people, had introduced a very similar bill which had got by both
houses of the Legislature, but it was vetoed by the Governor be
cause the Governor said it was unconstitutional. Then the work be
gan. Rex Black got the State Chamber of Commerce to help and in the
next session of the Legislature, Johnson introduced the bill. It was
a bill drafted by Rex Black and the industry.

Fry: Was it Dunwoody who helped you?

WRS: Charlie Dunwoody was in the State Chamber of Commerce and he helped
somewhat. He was Director of Natural Resources for the State Cham
ber at that time. Is Charlie still alive?

Fry: He lives up in Washington in the summers and in Pasadena in the
winters now.

WRS: He used to work in Santa Rosa for a hardward company after they
fired him out of Washington, D.C.

Fry: He has a manuscript on his lobbying against the transfer of the
Forest Service, but he says that it's not publishable yet.

Daughter]

WRS: Charlie was quite a boy. He was his own worst enemy; he bragged
too much .

Fry: But he was able to work with you on these pieces of legislation?

WRS: Oh yes. Charlie was not bad, although Rex never liked him. You
had to be a little bit careful with Charlie. He was apt to do
things differently from what you thought he was going to do. The
fact that he claimed so much for his ability back in Washington
was his downfall back there. The State Chamber got rid of him.

Fry: Article XIII Section 12 3/4 was really a taxation exemption article?

WRS: That's right, exempting the growing timber from taxes. Have you a
copy of the Attorney General's opinion that was given on the inter
pretation of 12 3/4 in 1962?

Fry: No.

WRS: I'll have to get that for you because I wrote it.* [laughter]

That was the funniest thing I ever saw. A fellow by the name of
Klee, who was in the Attorney General's office, a nice young fel
low, was assigned the job of writing the opinion. It was the ques
tion of the application of 12 3/4 as to whether they should tax that
timber which remained (when 10% of the original growth timber had
been taken off) because now it was marketable, or wait until forty
years when the maturity boards established by the Section would be
function! ng.

30

WRS : Klee didn't know anything about the provisions. He first

talked with the attorneys from the Board of Equalization, and he
became completely indoctrinated by the State Board of Equalization
and was all for having it their way.

Fry: Was this when you were with the California Forest Protective Asso
ciation?

WRS: Yes. It just happened that one of the assistants to the Attorney
General, who was in Los Angeles, was a very close friend of mine.
(I worked with him very closely because he was representing the
State Board of Forestry for a number of years for the Attorney
General's office.) I went down to see him, and I said, "Now these
boys from the Board of Equalization have had their day with Klee,
and I think industry should be allowed to have their day with Klee
and give him information."

Fry: He said, "By all means, you should have." So he paved the
way for me to go visit Klee. I had never met him before and I
talked with him. He was awfully hard to convince; that is, it was
hard to make him understand what we were trying to accomplish
primarily. He was thinking completely in terms of the State Board
of Equalization. I talked with him about it, and I later furnished
him with quite a report on what I had talked to him about.

A couple of months elapsed. He was still working on it. Some
body had told him about the Yale taxation seminar that was held at
the University of California, in which I was one of the participants.
He wanted the California story which I had presented at this seminar.
Apparently he couldn't get a copy or the library wouldn't give him
a copy. So he contacted me and asked me i f I had a copy of it.

I said, "Yes, and I'd be very glad to give you my copy to re
view." It was the Forestry School that didn't have it in their
library. I said, "Sure, I'd be happy to furnish you with it."*

He took it, and it completely reversed his thinking. He
wrote his argument from what I had set forth in that seminar pre
sentation. It was all in our favor. If there was anybody with
red faces, it was the attorneys of the Board of Equalization.
ClaughterU It was good. It was a good opinion. You must have
that, because it's an interpretation of the law the way that in
dustry has always interpreted it. And they've always followed it.

When 12 3/4 was passed by the people, the C.F.P.A. members,
like Pickering and different ones, were in an era where they needed
to grow timber and could grow it because it wasn't going to be
taxed while it was maturing. The lumber industry went for it 100$.

*See Appendix.

31

WRS: Over the years, however, the Board of Equalization and some people
who didn't know the background of the law had been pressing to tax
timber that was left. But it wasn't marketable at the time, and
therefore shouldn't be counted as taxable in the 30$ remaining, al
though it had become merchantable because of the change since 1926
in the value of fir timber, which wasn't of any value at all before.

Industry has always maintained that once it was exempt it was
still exempt up to the end of forty years when the maturity board
determined it to be mature. The Attorney General ruled right down
the line for us, and boy, they were mad.

This occurrence was just before I left C.F.P.A. It was one
of the last things I did in I960 and 1961, when the opinion came out.
They have been trying ever since to upset the ruling. That was the
reason why the State Board of Equalization introduced the bill which
Senator Peterson authored and it was passed, setting up the Board of
Equalization procedures and describing the method in which timber
should be reported to obtain exemption.

Industry is still fighting about that. It is still very con
troversial. The State Board has devised a form, to be filled out
by the timber owner, that is demanding more from the timber owner
than was ever anticipated by the author, Senator Peterson, who says
so himself. We're still in the process of arguing that one.

The Black-Pratt Affair

Fry: I heard a rumor that in one of the earlier attempts to dislodge
the State Forester, you were slated to take his place.

WRS: I was commissioned as State Forester for twenty-four hours. I had
to give it back, although it was signed by Governor Merriam.

Fry: When was this? Was it when Rex Black was on the Board?

WRS: Black was chairman of the Board of Forestry in 1934. He was also
executive secretary of the Forest Protective Association. There
was much dissatisfaction with Merritt Pratt, who had been the long
time State Forester. Pratt was getting a little obstinate. I never
will forget a meeting of the Board of Forestry held one time in
Ukiah. The Board said to Merritt, "At our last meeting we ordered
you to do so-and-so. Did you do it?" He said, "No."

They said, "Why didn't you?" "Because I didn't want to."

That was the attitude that he took — that ho was chief and bot
tle- washer, and ho wasn'1 qoinq to take any dictates from anybody

32

WRS: else. And he didn't. It got worse and worse and it was very dif
ficult. Merritt was getting old. Finally they got an agreement
out of Pratt.

Let me go back and explain it another way. Rex manipulated
around until he had a pretty good group with him in the State Board
of Forestry. Supposedly, he thought he had a majority who would
support him in a vote to remove Pratt.

Mrs. Pratt was a politician. They thought they had it all
cut and dried that Merritt had agreed that he would not oppose be
ing moved down from State Forester position. They would put him in
charge of the State Nursery. He would get the same salary. He had
agreed that he wouldn't make any fuss about it at all.

Fry: Do you know how they got him to agree to that?

WRS: Oh yes. He knew he was in bad with the Board of Forestry. He
wasn't cooperating with them and there was a lot of outside in
fluence against him. He actually agreed to do that. On that
basis .... but let's go back a little further.

Emanuel Fritz was one of those that Rex had picked on the Board
of Forestry. They had a meeting all set in which they were going
to fire Merritt and hire me. Emanuel Fritz went to Sacramento for
the meeting, but instead he sat in the lobby of the Senator Hotel,
reading Anthony Adverse.

Fry: Did he think he was being used?

WRS: J_ think he was and he thought he was.

Fry: He was sitting in the lobby while the meeting was going on?

WRS: He didn't go to the meeting at all. They manipulated around and

got rid of Fritz very quickly and got the Governor to appoint some
one else who said that he would go along. A fellow from Lake County
said that he would go along, and he did go along in the firing of
Merritt.

Of course, this was the agreement with Merritt (I had already
been chosen to follow him as the State Forester): he was to go
along in the firing with no objections, and move to the head of the
State Nursery at Davis.

I never will forget that night after the meeting. We had a
biq celebration. I was a drinking man in those days and we had a
real time. We had it out at Mitchell's place, at his home. I was
presented that night with the commission, all signed by Governor
Merriam, as State Forester.

Fry: Was this the meeting in which part of the Board met in one building

33
Fry: and part in another building for a while?

WRS : They were meeting all kinds of ways. There was a division in the
Board, but Rex had the controlling vote in this one meeting.

Fry: Rex was with one group while the dissenters were over somewhere
else?

WRS : Yes .

Fry: Did they think they were holding their own meeting?

WRS: They didn't know what they were doing. Rex was way ahead of them
that meeting when the Board fired Merritt. I don't know whether
Pratt ever knew that I was in line for the position at that time.
Merritt and I were always good friends. Even to the day he died,
we were good friends.

This happened in the afternoon, and he went home afterwards
and told his wife. That's where his agreement didn't hold. He
and his wife went down to the old riverboat, The Delta Queen, and
went to San Francisco while we were partying at Mitchell's. The
boat traveled at night and landed about three o'clock in the morn
ing. Early in the morning in San Francisco, Mrs. Pratt got hold
of some very influential politicians and the bubble was broken.

Fry: Who did she get hold of?

WRS: I don't know specifically. She got hold of some friends of hers.
She was the politician, and she knew the right people to contact
from a political standpoint. So it blew up, and there was the
biggest furor in the State of California that you ever saw. Mes
sages went to the Governor, just flooding the Governor's office.
Poor old Frank Merriam had to call me up — I had the commission —
and ask me to return it.

As an aftermath of that, Emanue! was very apologetic to me.
He was so afraid that he had been responsible for it. He was
apologizing, and I said, "Oh, that's politics, Emanue I . I don't
hold any resentment against you because you didn't stay by your
word." But he has never forgotten that he didn't stay by his word.
So 1 was State Forester for twenty-four hours.

Fry: Right after that, Ri ley fired you?

WRS: Yes, and then all of this followed. In years to come, I finally
came back, but I was always glad that I never was State Forester.

Fry: Why?

WRS: From a financial standpoint, I made twice over what the State

34

WRS : Forester made or is making.
Fry: Do you think you had about the same amount of influence?

WRS: Well, I shouldn't say this, but there wasn't much that took place

within the State Board of Forestry — after the 1944 reorganization —
there wasn't much that I didn't have a pretty good finger on and
control of — for the industry, not for myself. We had a good Board
of Forestry, so much so that when I retired, I have an autographed
commission as an honorary member (ornery is right) C laughter] of
the Board of Forestry and am a I lowed to speak at any meeting and
say anything I want.

They have taken my judgment quite a bit because I have had a
lot of experience and they know it. The newer they are, the more
influence I have, I guess. I'm still in pretty good with the Board
of Forestry. It was an interesting experience, but I was awfully
glad that I never became State Forester.

Fry: There was one by-product of this controversy over Pratt that I
think you had a part in too, and that was Black's being dropped
from the Society of American Foresters.

WRS: Pratt's friends (mostly the Forest Service people) were instigators
of kicking Rex Black out of the S.A.F. for unprofessional conduct.
It was done rather surreptitiously, without any real background,
because he was, as some of his friends believed, exercising the
duty of any individual who, as a member of the State Board of
Forestry, was acting in the best interests of the State of Cali
fornia. It wasn't unethical (Black's behavior).

The result was that there were some fifteen of us in Cali
fornia who resigned from the S.A.F. in protest. For a number of
years, I didn't reinstate; Rex never did. They finally threw it
out, but we demanded that it be cleared up, and it was eventually
cleared up.

Rex was offered reinstatement, but he never reinstated. Most
of the resigners, like Swift Berry and others that I know of who
protested, didn't go back into the S.A.F. after that. It was quite
a jolt. At that time, the S.A.F. was pretty near broken right in
two. The major part of S.A.F. on the west coast was about to be
reestab I i shed.

Fry: You were really thinking about forming an independent organization?

WRS: Oh yes. We had the thing pretty much under control and organized,
and that was probably the real reason that the S.A.F. rescinded its
action on Rex Black. But the damage had been done.

Fry: How far did you get in trying to establish a new Society for the West?

35

WRS : We were already the western part of the Society. We were all for

going in for a new one, if it could be set up. We could have split

up S.A.F.

Fry: Who were the leaders in this besides you and Swift Berry?
WRS: There was Swift Berry and a number of others in the northeast.

Fry: Maybe the ones who wrote the initial letter to the Journal, asking
for the investigation on the action against Black?

WRS: Yes, it was that bunch that were strong for it, mostly industry
people who were members of S.A.F.

Fry: Do you think this was a division along the lines of U.S. Forest
Service people and the industry?

WRS: Yes it was, because Black's termination with S.A.F. was primarily
instigated by Bevier Show, who was then the federal Regional For
ester for this CCa I i forniaH District. He was the ringleader. I
often think of some others who claimed they supported Rex, but were
really responsible for the action to get Rex Black out. Show and
his brother-in-law, Eddie Kotok, were the strong ones who were in
on the deal. It was primarily a Forest Service move.

Fry: Why did the Forest Service want Pratt kept in as State Forester,
or did they?

WRS: Merritt had been an old Forest Service man, for one thing, plus
the fact that Merritt was in the School of Forestry here at U.C.
at one time. He was an assistant professor of forestry before he
became State Forester. Many of his old students were Forest Ser
vice people who came out of the University of California Forestry
School. So there was that tie-in that gave him Forest Service sup
port, plus the fact that there was not too good blood between the
Forest Service and industry.

Fry: The fact that industry had lined up and was behind Black ....

WRS: They lined up, but that wasn't it so much. There were other rea
sons why there was a cleavage between the Forest Service and in
dustry, and there has been for years.

Fry: Was this proposed federal regulation of timber cutting an issue
that added to the cleavage?

WRS: Wei I, it was that. For a long time there was quite a pressure on
the part of the Forest Service to have complete federal regulation
of all forest lands, including private lands. That was one big
reason why there was this difference.

Fry: Do you think that a man like Merritt Pratt, who was relatively

36

Fry: weak, judging from what everyone else has told me, would be desir
able from the U.S. Forest Service standpoint because he was more
eas i I y man i pu I ated?

WRS : Yes. I know that he went to the Forest Service for practically
everything. They directed and dictated to the State Forester to
the detriment of private timber ownership. The Forest Service was
very influential. It wasn't until after the reorganization of the
State Board of Forestry that industry really got its licks in.

Fry: What are some examples of this? Was the division of responsibility
of fire control and patrol one of the sore points?

WRS: That was the function of the State Forester in those days, primarily
fire control and some sort of fire prevention. That was their main
purpose in life. It's only been in recent years that there has been
the diversification and expansion of duties that there is in the
Division of Forestry. There weren't any regulations of industry or
anything of that kind.

Fry: The California Forest Protection Association and others were not
too happy with the way this was organized under Pratt?

WRS: No, they were not. Industry really wasn't dealt with as it should
have been.

Fry: What about the proportion of protection the State gave to the foot
hills and chaparral lands, the ratio of this to the protection
given forested areas, in the higher altitudes, at that time?

WRS: Private ownership was located in the lower lands rather than the
upper lands, and there was a tendency, even where the State gave
money to the Forest Service for the protection of private lands
within the exterior boundaries of National Forests, to not give
too good protection. It was just forced upon them.

There was a neglect of private lands in the area set aside
for protection by the State. The Forest Service was doing more
in the protection of federal lands than they were for the protec
tion of private lands, although they were paid by the State and
obligated to protect private lands. The State Division of Forestry
was becoming more and more of a glorified fire department. That's
what they were, until the reorganization.

Then some capable people were appointed to the Board of Forestry
in 1944 who were able to control the State program. The policy was
changed. The Board of Forestry was a policy-making group after the
reorganization, and the State Forester had to follow the policies
adopted by the Board.

In

this last [I965D session of the Legislature, they almost

37

WRS : threw a monkey wrench into the deal by doing away with the Forest
Practice committees and the Board of Forestry, practically cutting
out the entire setup and leaving the responsibility to direct all
activities entirely in the hands of the State Forester. The Board
of Forestry was to be just a figurehead.

Fry: Did you come out of retirement for that one?

WRS: Sure, and helped to beat it. It was a recommendation of the so-called
Little Hoover Commission that was set up. Their recommendation was
to do away with the Forest Practice committees and have the State
Forester be in complete charge of things. They wanted him to do
just exactly what we wanted to avoid and what we did avoid, by hav
ing these District Forest Practice committees devise the ways and
means of setting up criteria for forest practices on private lands.

Fry: Under the Little Hoover Commission, the cutting regulations would
have been devised strictly by the State, without any voice on the
part of the private owners?

WRS: That's right. Intrigue within intrigue in the State of California.

Fry: Legally, the Board of Forestry did have policy-making power over
Pratt, didn't it?

WRS: No, it wasn't spelled out. The fact is that with each new admin
istration, there was a change of the Board of Forestry membership;
there wasn't anyone who could be too firm. They were subject to
the whims of the Governor. It made it possible for the State For
ester to say, "I'll do it the way I want to do it."

After 1944, the reorganization setup specifically spelled out
that the State Board of Forestry was a policy-making group, and
the State Forester was to administer the policies established by
the State Board of Forestry rather than his own policies.

Other State Foresters

Fry: Could you describe how Dewitt "Swede" Nelson was appointed by
Governor Earl Warren?

WRS: Well, it went back to the time when Merritt Pratt, who survived
the attempted ouster, finally saw the handwriting on the wall.
Becoming of age for retirement, he decided to retire in November,
1944.

Fry: And this was when Ray Clar became acting ....

38

WRS: Ray Clar was made acting State Forester from the retirement of
Merritt Pratt. Ray was second in command until the time when
Swede Nelson came into the picture and when the new Board came
into the picture. Ray Clar was not about to be moved up. He had
a little difficulty, I think a nervous breakdown, but he was not
going to be moved up anyway.

Fry: But his illness came later.

WRS: Yes, his illness came later, but he was just not the man.

Fry: Do you mean because it is a high pressure situation?

WRS: He wasn't an administrator. Ray is not an administrator.

It became the first task, or one of the tasks, of the new
Board of Forestry in '45 to get a State Forester. The State For
ester, under the law, was required to be a technical forester. He
had to have a degree and be a technically trained forester. It was
a question of looking around as to who it should be.

As I recall, the Board of Forestry did consider some others
outside of the division of personnel, but it seemed, and I don't
know just how it occurred, that Swede became an individual who was
a possibility and who might be available.

Fry: I believe he was on the San Bernardino National Forest.

WRS: He was the Forest Supervisor of the San Bernardino National For
est at that time. He was finally chosen by the Board. Now in
dustry didn't have anything to do with that particular part except
the approval of the Board's selection with a little bit of tongue-
in-cheek because they were a little bit uncertain, since here was
a career man in the Forest Service being lifted out into the posi
tion of State Forester having to do with private timberland, which
was his primary duty. Swede was never a politician as Mrs. Pratt
was.

Fry: A powerful woman.
WRS: Yes, she was.

Fry: Did this reservation have anything to do with any specific brushes
that Swede might have had with industry in the State ....

WRS: No, no.

Fry: .... or was it just guilt by association?

WRS: It was guilt by association. No one feared h im; they had nothing
specific against Swede. It was merely the question, can we make a

39

WRS: real State Forester out of a U.S. Forest Service career man? That
was the only question. General Hannum said, "Well, he's either go
ing to perform as a state forester with a consideration of the duties
of the State Forester, or else!"

And Swede did nobly that way. He was very good. Later on, he
got to be appointed the Director of Natural Resources in place of
General Hannum. Swede was a good State Forester.

Fry: A while ago you said that this was with the concurrence of industry.
What form did this take — C.F.P.A. or other organizations?

WRS: Primarily it was through C.F.P.A. because we were doing the talking
for the industry. We always talked, that is, I always talked, for
industry (I say "we," but I was the spokesman for industry through
the C.F.P.A.). There was also acquiescence on the part of the red
wood people through their trade association and the Western Pine
Association, which was operating in the pine region.

Individual timber owners and people in the state not connected
with C.F.P.A. found Swede acceptable too. But Swede had the quali
fications. Had we objected, I'm sure that the Board of Forestry
would never have appointed him, but he turned out to be an excel
lent State Forester.

Then came the time that Swede was moved up to Director of Natu
ral Resources. The present State Forester, Francis Raymond, had
been a deputy, and there never was a man who had more endorsement
and backing from the industry than did Francis Raymond, but in the
beginning he was a problem child for us. For a time, we all wished
we had Swede back.

Francis was a stickler for some things and he was inclined to
go by the rote of law, and he listened to some poor advice from
some of his immediate underlings, which was quite a problem to us.

Fry: Which immediate underlings?

WRS: I don't think this should be published, but one was a man by the
name of Stewart Schick, who was the law enforcement officer for
Francis Raymond when Raymond was the assistant in charge of the
redwood district. Stewart Schick was just an impossible individual
as far as industry is concerned, and rather a dishonest individual,
we know. He influenced a lot of things for a time until he finally
dropped out of the picture.

Fry: This problem then was in regard to the enforcement of the provisions
of the Forest Practices Act?

WRS: That was part of it; primarily, that was it. Stewart Schick was a
pol iceman .

40
Fry: Not a forester?

WRS: He was a forester too, but his attitude and actions were those of a
policeman. Industry didn't care too much for being policed under a
voluntary law. Stewart Schlick was making it a compulsory law in
every way with no chance of cooperation, which was essential at the
beginning of the Forest Practice Act, and we didn't like it too much

At that time, and every once in a while since, about the time
that we thought that Francis Raymond was really with us, he would
do some things that were a little bit disturbing. We were so much
for Francis Raymond as the man to succeed Swede Nelson, that al
though Francis Raymond had never received his degree in forestry,
we partially made it possible for Raymond to obtain a degree in
forestry from Colorado, in absentia.

Fry: Was this an honorary degree or a real one?

WRS: It was a real degree. He had practically completed his forestry
course. They gave him a real degree but without his having com
pleted the full curriculum.

Fry: This was from Boulder?

WRS: Yes, at Boulder, Colorado. We were willing to go to bat for him
on that. It was a political move that we were able to do and en
dorse him for. They were happy to give it to him, and he was en
titled to it. It was just a question of a little shortage of time
until he would have gotten a degree, but he didn't. I don't re
member just why he didn't get it, but I think he was called out of
school .

Sometimes we say we thought we had him going all right and
then all of a sudden he breaks over the traces again. He's a per
fectionist to the degree that he loses sight of any practical ap
plication. He's a stickler for doing this and that. He's apt to
listen to some people who might give him poor advice.

However, we were able to work on him because of the fact that
under this reorganization plan, the policy-making authority was es
tablished in the Board of Forestry and the State Forester was only
the administrator to administer the policies that were adopted by
the State Board of Forestry.

Last year, the Little Hoover Commission pretty near wrecked
the whole situation when they proposed to relegate the Board of
Forestry to more or less an advisory group. The State Forester
was to make all the policies and administer them and everything
else. We were able to stop that one, but whether we'll be able
to hold the line on the thing, I don't know. They were going to
do away with the Forest Practice committees too, which was the fault
of the Forest Practice committees to a degree, and the fault of the
State Forester in that he didn't follow through.

41

ROLE OF CALIFORNIA FOREST PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION

Positions of Timberland Owners

Fry: Perhaps we can discuss the issues that later culminated in the

reorganization of the State Board of Forestry and the passage of
the Forest Practice Act.

WRS: The issue of what should be done dates way back; it started even

as early as the 1920's. The public awareness of the private owner
ship of timberlands, and its becoming so-called "conservation minded"
(particularly the operations of the Save-the-Redwoods League in
California) had a great deal to do with developing this trend.

The Legislature felt there should be some sort of timber har
vesting control. The federal government wanted to enact a federal
law, whereby the Forest Service would regulate private owners of
timber. The new State Board of Forestry, established in 1945, was
very sympathetic toward industry, and it was therefore opposed to
a federal law being passed to regulate private timber lands.

William Rosecrans was chairman of the Board. Because of the
Legislature's opposition to federal control, the Board suggested
the development of a Forest Practice Act for the State of Cali
fornia which would do and accomplish what was necessary, In other
words, provide for the continuous production on timber growing lands
in the State of California, for the benefit of industry as well as
for the benefit of the people as a whole for recreational use.

Fry: If I understand what you're saying, this more or less started out
as a kind of defensive measure against the threat of federal regu
lation of private timber practices.

WRS: It was, yes. There was very definitely a feeling by most people

in the State of California that they didn't want federal interven-
fion. There had been indications that if the federal government
were to lake over, it would be much what we have now in some of our
federal laws with regard to regulations for the entire United States
which are not applicable to the diversity of the regions that are
being dealt with. That's the reason why we wanted a California law

FROM

PAN FRANTT-~0 CHRONlClg
•'••. Y. U,. Ct: 'JH 9. '"C9

ORGANIZE FOREST PROTECTIVE
ASSOCIATION TO FIGHT FIRES

Owners Determined to Work

Out Reforestration

Problems.

AT A meeting of the representa
tive* of the leading timber cor-
poratloni and Individual owners
of the State, held yesterday In the Mer
chants' Exchange building an organ I -
atlon wan perfected to b* known a*
the "California Forest Protective Asuo-
clitlon." Through thl« . organisation,
which It to be Incorporated under the
State laws, the timber owner* will have
their land* patrolled to prevent fore«t
nres. assessing themielve* to meet the
~est.

The committee which 1* to draw up
he article? of Incorporation la eem-
pp.td of the following member*: T. B.
Walker. ^ x. Wendcllng. C. 1C. Stafford.
H. B. Hlckey, A. B. Hammond. C. R.
Johnson and O. C. Hazlett ,'

Some Idea of what la In the minds of
he organizer* of this association may
had from the suggestions made for
"The.. California ForMt Fire
.ssoclatlon" was first • u«est»d. 'but
i« objection was mad* that this was
limited to Include other Joint action
itemplated. as toward securing re-

,» I.0"., °f tj«xatlon •* stumpage and
m lands and efforts In the direction of
tforestration. "Forestry Association"
vas suggested, only to meet the objec-
hat it aavored of "the long-haired
.ethren, -and "Forest Association-
round too barren in meaning. "Cal-
orals Forest Protective Association"
len determined upon and adopted.
80LUTIOH OF PROBLEMS.
This action of the timber men in

m S * W0rk ln the state' whl<^
ll mean an annual assessment of 2
nts for each acre owned by the mem-
•rs. Is significant In that It marks a
5 step toward a solution of some
the problems of conservation by the
ners themselves, rather than by the
ate or National Government through
aternal legislation enacted on the
rlnclple of the public Interest In the
'Ivately owned forests. The timber
1 present yesterday expressed them
selves as being quite as reluctant to
•ee their timber burned as the public
could be. and their convictions took
material form- In the »20 gold pieces
which each left with tne treasurer to
defray the Initial expenses of the or
ganization.

1 The meeting had been brought about I
by State Forester O. B. Lull, and the I

iclpal speakers were T. B. Walker
T Minneapolis, who owns large hold-
Ings in th» northern part of the State-
D- P. Simons, the flre warden of a
Mmllar ansorlatlon In Washington, and
''fS- T. Allen, district forester of Port
land. Or.

Walker, who acted as chairman of
the meeting, made the address at the
morning session, In which he urged a
reduction of the taxes on standing tim
ber and on land* which had been cut
•ver, BO that the owner* could afford
to-hold their land* longer, eat with less
waste, and keep the denuded lands
while new trees were growing. He said
that at the present rate* of interest
and taxation the cost of holding timber
lands would !>« as great a* the original
Investment In ten years; "In twenty
years it would be qtnwduple the origi
nal cost,' In forty years multiply It by
flfteen, and In sixty years the cost
would represent fifty-eight time* the
amount of the original Investment."

^ORGANIZATION OF OWNERS.

Si '

Jf, T. Allen spoke on the arguments
for organization of timber owners. In
which he took the position that the
reforestation problems, a* well a* flre
protection, could be better worked out
by the owner* themselves than by leg
islation which might In the enthusiasm
of the framers become punitive upon
the owners.

•The public and the lawmaker have
got to be shown the importance of
your ;ndustry." he said. "The timber
owner must avoid the weakness of a
forced defense. Ifo doubt the public
will awaken. It will and perhaps soon.
One of the first idea* of the awakened
public mind will be that since timber
is a vital resource its private owner
ship 1* a public trmst. The public ha*
been made so suspicious that It may
not volunteer co-operation. They must
be shown the effect of taxation. Show
them that If they force cutting by
taxe* and burn the rest that they will
have to pay all the taxe* and more for
their houses, fence* and fruit boxes.
Show them where they lose by assess -
Ing cut-over lands so high that you
must abandon them to be reburned
Into a desert, and that such land* pay
little taxe* after that.

"The other fellow I* organising. Look
at the fore»try and conservation asso
ciations and commission* springing up
everywhere. My sjvlce Is not to Ig
nore It Study the problem and beat
him to It. I see no surer way t'o show
the public you are doing It sincerely
than to organise a flre association, and
the beauty- of It Is that It will pay In
dollars and ceftts besides."

D. P. Simons read a paper at the
afternoon .session In which he showed
what had been the practical operation,
benefit* and cost* of th* organization
the Washington timber men for flre
protection, and when the motion to
organise was put It was decided to "do
It then and there."

D. P. Simons. Fire Warden
of Washington Timber Men's
Association, and «£. T. Allen.
District Forester of Oregon,
Who Addressed the Meeting of
California Timber Men Yes
terday.

42

WRS: that would be adaptable to California. Within the Forest Practice
Act, we divided California into four Forest Practice Districts be
cause of the different situations and conditions. That was the
primary reason why industry was fully supported by the State Board
of Forestry in their promotion of the Forest Practice Act.

In addition, everyone feels (and in outright experience proven
even with the Volstead Act in the United States) that to try to
regulate something by just passing a law isn't the solution in many
situations. When it becomes objectionable or even restrictive to
the point that the economy is affected, then you are going to have
the end of the road for regulations, and things will be more or less
voluntary and localized rather than on a federal basis.

Fry: In the early Forties, did C.F.P.A. have any contact with the feelers
that were sent out from the Forest Service in Washington, on this
federal regulation proposal?

WRS: Do you mean were we in contact with those feelers? We were well
aware of it and on top of it at all times.

Fry: You had seen sample bills that were circulating then?

WRS: Yes, and of course the industry itself had its connections through
the National Lumber Manufacturers Association, which was the Wash
ington representative of the timber interests in the United States.

Fry: What about the American Forest Products Industries?

WRS: That was an offshoot of the N.L.M.A., but separated entirely from
the N.L.M.A., which did lobbying and legislative work for the tim
ber interests in Washington. The A. F.P.I, always was and has re
mained an agency for the dissemination of facts and information.
It is the agency where people can go to get true information con
cerning the industry and its operations.

Fry: Was it primarily statistical?

WRS: It was statistical, and it was not propaganda, it was factual. It
still remains as such. It is a very elaborate organization. It
has an educational setup through which is disseminated much informa
tion to the public school system throughout the United States, rela
tive to forestry. A. F.P.I, follows through and gives corrective
information to the Encyclopedia Britannica and other publications
which publish factual information.

A. F.P.I, has been kept completely divorced from the N.L.M.A.,
although it is supported by the industry. I am amazed: sometimes
I get involved in organizations similar to the A. F.P.I, with a little
different name, which engage in controversies and actually do lobby
ing — of course, honest lobbying, but at the same time they become

43

WRS: involved in controversies between the Forest Service and other

governmental agencies. This activity doesn't lend itself to giv
ing them a reputation as a place to get unbiased information. That
is the reason why the N.L.M.A. has set up the A. P.P. I.

Pry: I suppose that a regional body like C.F.P.A. would work with them.

WRS: C.F.P.A. is very closely related to it. N.L.M.A. is really a trade
organization, and you would say that the representatives from a
trade standpoint in California would be the California Redwood As
sociation and the California branch of the Western Wood Products
Association, which is the old Western Pine Association. They are
the trade associations. The California Forest Protective is not
a trade association per se. It is a timber ownership organization.
That was the basis of the membership.

You will find in its bylaws and its articles of incorporation,
that its setup and its requirements are timber ownership. In order
to become a member of C.F.P.A., you must have at least one acre of
timberland. C.F.P.A. works primarily in the interests of forestry
and conservation, and legislation having to do with forestry and
conservation.

Fry: When you mention that you didn't like the federal regulation be
cause of the difficulty of getting a law that would allow for all
the diversity of timber resources, I wonder if you found these
suggested bills contained provisions for regional committees to
be formed?

WRS: No. They practically centered it all in the United States Forest
Service. Of course, there were the regional offices of the U.S.
Forest Service, but it was the principle of federal regulation
which disregarded (we thought, and the people of California thought)
states' rights. We're kind of states' rights people, the same as
they are in Texas.

Fry: I read one of the proposed bills, sent out by Earla Clapp, Chief

Forester, which did set up regional committees made up of the tim
ber owners.

WRS: I don't recall it ever was seriously considered. I think it was
made as a suggestion.

The private timber owner today has conflicts with the federal
Forest Service. Basically, the federal Forest Service is set up
in order to protect the timber held by the government, but it was
supposed to be harvested and not just locked up. We had such con
troversies as the Wilderness and proposals of that kind which have
always been started federally but which locally you have to fight
off. We have many ways in which the federal government still has
sort of an Indian sign on the purchaser of federal timber. So far

44

WRS : it hasn't been too bad, but the method used for determining stump-
age prices, for instance, are, we think, not too soundly based in
many cases. It is believed the federal agency takes into considera
tion the top stumpage value rather than the average value in order
to establish its stumpage prices.

Demand brings about higher prices. Industry is responsible
too for the fact that bidding on timber, which is quite essential
to some of them, has been upped to such a point that no one makes
any money except the federal government. It makes a lot of money
from the returns, which is all right and it should make money, but
not to the point that the purchaser must throw up his contract be
cause he can't operate and make any profit out of it.

It's a necessity for many of the small owners of private tim
ber to be dependent on federally-owned or state-owned timber, be
cause they don't have enough individual ownership to have a good
operation with sufficient production.

Fry: An organization like C.F.P.A., which is comprised mainly of large
timber owners, must find it a little difficult to accept the For
est Service policy of preference for small timber owners in sales.

WRS: Yes, that is so. Even the federal government became very much in
volved in one of its setups in awarding the timber sale, to the
point that there were severe conflicts.

This Forest Service requirement of sales going to a local in
dustry often runs into a snag. You'd be surprised. Even the large
owners are still dependent on the reserves in the federally owned
timberland. A few of them could operate on a continuous production
basis on account of their large holdings, but very few. Many of
the large owners in California are dependent on the supplementing
of their own ownership with that of the federal government.

Of course, this is good conservation too, because there is
ripe, mature timber growing on federal land which shou I d be cut.
There should be an allowable cut established that will take care
of harvesting timber which has reached its maturity, in order to
open up the area for a more continuous growth of timber.

The result is that there is considerable stumpage being bought
by large timber owners and run through their mills. They, of course,
are able to preserve their timberland, which is growing too for a
longer period of time. But even on their own land, they harvest
mature timber and supplement it with mature federal timber in order
to gnin full production.

Iry: II scorns to mo th.it an organization like C.F.P.A. could do d great
deal in trying to clarify and alter the policies of the regional
Forest Service office in this matter of bidding and the margin of

45
Fry: profit to be allowed. Did you do anything like this?

WRS : C.F.P.A. has worked with the two trade organizations in California;
it's really a trade organization's problem. C.F.P.A. is not in the
production business per se. There are timber owners who are in the
production business, but these problems of stumpage and allowable
cut are problems of the production angle — the operating and manufac
turing business. C.F.P.A. is still a land ownership body.

There is about a fifty-fifty division in the Association be
tween land ownership that has no operation and land ownership that
does have lumber operation. It is a trade association problem in
relation to Forest Service timber and how it is marketed and how it
is harvested, and so forth. C.F.P.A. is also tied in; you can't
completely divorce it or separate it. C.F.P.A. does work very
closely with Western Wood Products and the California Redwood As
sociation.

Another place where trade associations come in very strongly
is in controversies about large acreages to be taken out of pri
vate ownership and put into public ownership, such as for a red
wood national forest or park. That is an important problem of
C.F.P.A., but it is also one of the trade associations because it
curtails production and limits the allowable life of an organiza
tion.

C.F.P.A. primarily, in its very beginning, was what its name
said: a protective organization. At the time it was organized,
there was no federal or state protection of timber from fire. That
was the primary reason for its organization. It led to and expanded
into protection from insects and disease also. By that time, the
federal government and the State were concerned in insect and dis
ease damage too.

Fry: When did you expand into insects and disease?

WRS: Insect and disease damage actually became a consideration in about
the early Forties. It was recognized that there were insect and
disease problems, but as far as the private timber owner was con
cerned and the State itself and the actions of the C.F.P.A., it was
not until the early Forties that anything was done on private tim-
berl ands.

Fry: But C.F.P.A. was vitally interested in the Forest Practice Act,
which is concerned with production.

WRS: Yes, that's our baby.

Fry: But this was more the concern of trade organizations rather than a
landowners' association.

WRS: It is a combination. The fundamental thing is that timberland,

46

WRS: timber-producing lands, be maintained in a productive state so that
there will be a sufficient production of timber and an orderly har
vest of the mature timber, and to allow for the regeneration and for
the carrying on of the operation, primarily of the industry itself.

That was the basic background of the Forest Practice Act and
reason for it. That was the thought of the Forestry Study Committee
of the two houses of the Legislature and the Board of Forestry, hop
ing to accomplish that as their purpose, and it is being accomplished,
maybe not to the maximum, but they are still working on it.
Forestry is not static. It moves and conditions move, and how to do
these things changes very materially.

The Reorganization of the Board of Forestry

Fry: This brings us to the Reorganization of the Board of Forestry,

which included, among other things, staggered terms in order to get
away from this cyclical pattern of the government.

WRS: California has always changed governors every four years, except
when Earl Warren went for three terms, and Brown is now going for
three.

Fry: Do you feel that there was a complete consensus on the Rosecrans

Board about the importance of instituting some kind of state regu
lation to prevent federal regulation from coming in?

WRS: Oh yes, we had the complete support of the members of the Board
of Forestry.

Fry: Do you have knowledge of how these members were appointed or chosen?

WRS: They were chosen by a method which had restrictions that were ob
jected to by Governor Warren at the time. Each member must be
selected from a group that is recommended to the governor by in
dustry. In other words, the redwood people recommend one or two
to the governor and from among these he makes his choice. He can
not make just a political appointment.

Judge Peter J. Cormack, who was appointed by Governor Brown
as a representative of water, merely had something to do with a
little water district in southern California. Primarily he was a
judge, a police judge. He didn't last long on account of his health,
Now they have a real water man, an engineer who knows water problems.
The original appointee for water, Jeff Prendergast, was an authority
on water and a water engineer who headed up the Bear Valley Water
District in southern California. Although restricted by certain

47

WRS: requirements, Earl Warren's appointments to the first Board under
the new setup were good ones. Rosecrans was the representative of
the public, a very outstanding man in the conservation field, and
in other fields a dedicated man, and an excellent official.

Fry: Was he with the State Chamber of Commerce at that time?

WRS: He was always a member of the State Chamber and had a lot to do

with State Chamber committees. Primarily he had been with the Los
Angeles Chamber of Commerce. He was also very closely affiliated
with the American Forestry Association and was president for a num
ber of years of the A.F.A. He was always an individual who followed
problems of water as well as timber and natural resources generally.

Jeff Prendergast was an outstanding water man in the State.

Kenneth Walker, of the Walker family ownership, represented
the pine industry.

Frank Reynolds, who had been a member previously of the State
Board of Forestry and who was a Democrat, was appointed by a Repub
lican, Earl Warren, to the Board of Forestry simply because he was
the choice of the redwood people. He had been a supervisor in Men-
docino County, county assessor, and was a timber owner very closely
affiliated with the redwood area. He was considered a real repre
sentative and a knowledgeable man in the redwood producing industry.

On the timber ownership, we had Wendell Robie. He was a foi —
estry man and a forestry operator in the retail business, but also
was a private timber owner (non-operational); he didn't have a saw
mill. He had previously been on the Board of Forestry too, so he
was wel I qual i f ied.

As livestock man, we had Rod McArthur, an outstanding live
stock man from Modoc County. He died and was replaced by another
outstanding livestock man, A. T. Spencer.

The agricultural man was from Ventura County. He was a real
agriculturalist, Domingo Hardiston. His father was very prominent
in the Chamber of Commerce and the California Taxpayers Association
and an outstanding agriculturalist. Domingo Hardis/on was a partner
in large agricultural interests in the Santa Paula Valley. Real
representation and fully qualified men comprised the first appointed
Board.

Each one fulfilled the requirements and particular functions,
and they were a very cooperative Board. There was an article pub
lished in the American forestry magazine, American Forests, "Bringing
Forestry to the People." The title implied something to that effect.
The article described this Board of Forestry, the original Board of
Forestry of 1945.

48

Fry: Were these men appointed before you took over C.F.P.A.?

WRS: No, they came in after. I came into C.F.P.A. in 1943, and they were
not appointed until 1945.

Fry: I was wondering if Warren would have consulted you and some of the
trade organizations for some of these appointments.

WRS: Well, he had to and he did. Bill Rosecrans always used to like to
tell a story about how he was coming up from Los Angeles on the
Lark one night, and I happened to be on the Lark too. We had ad
joining bedrooms. I didn't know Bill Rosecrans personally at the
time except by reputation. I had never met him.

Somebody — I don't know who it was — recalled to me the conver
sation that went on in our bedroom that night, to the effect that
the man who was being considered as appointee of the people at large
was outstanding and all. I blew him up to the sky; I didn't know
he was in the adjoining bedroom. He always teased me about the
conversation we had.

He and I were very good friends after that. I had known him
by reputation, but never before had I known him personally. The
industry had a great deal to do with advising Governor Warren in
his appointments.

Fry: Did the Board, as it materialized, more or less follow along the
lines that you suggested?

WRS: Oh yes, very definitely. They were very responsive to good rea
soning put forth by industry, and they were the champions, I think,
for industry. Had it not been for that kind of a Board, I think
that the start of the Forest Practice Act would have been very
much handicapped if it had been purely a political football. That
was what we avoided and have avoided.

Even today, the present Board of Forestry with an entirely
different personnel now are very cooperative and responsive to
the people they work with, that is, private timber ownership. They
also see industry's side of the controversy.

Writing the Forest Practice Act

Fry: Could we go back to the time of the first writing of the State
Forest Practice Act? Perhaps you could comment now on why you
selected as a pattern the "Model Bill for Public Control of Cutting
on Private Forest Land," by the Forestry Committee of the Council

49

Fry: of State Government. It was primarily from Earl Snell, the Governor
of Oregon. The original Forest Practice Bill in California was
SB 637.

WRS: Right. When the Forestry Study Committee was set up, they hired
Emanuel Fritz as the expert for the Committee. Naturally, as in
every case, the expert directs and guides the thinking of the com
mittee he is working for. It developed through the field studies
and the hearings that were held that legislation would be forthcom
ing. The Committee wanted something in the way of legislation that
would do certain things to bring about better production and leave
the harvested timberland in a better condition. The result was
that Emanuel used the Maryland Act as the pattern for such a bill,
which had already been passed and was established in Maryland. He
took that Act and modified it to fit California conditions.

Mind you, Emanuel 's first Forest Conservancy Act, which I have
in my files, was a statewide deal. There wasn't any such thing as
forest districts; there wasn't any division of the State. Fritz's
adaptation of the Maryland Act had many and sundry individual ideas
which he injected into his law. Emanuel proposed establishing more
or less of a police state in the administration of the Act.

Fry: This was when the idea of bonding timber operators first originated?

WRS: Yes, he wanted bonding, licensing, and all of that. That was what
he developed for the Committee and what he gave to the Committee.

I had a problem within my own organization, because in C.F.P.A.
about half the membership — such fellows as Dick Colgan and Swift
Berry — were very much opposed to any kind of regulation at all.
They didn't want it at all.

Fry: Were they opposed to the Forest Practice Act too?

WRS: Oh yes, they were. After Fritz had developed his Forest Conservancy
Act, we had a big meeting in San Francisco in 1944. We had an enor
mous attendance; we had some eighty or ninety people there from in
dustry.

Fry: And C.F.P.A.?

WRS: Well, it was in conjunction with the State Forestry Study Committee.
The Forestry Study Committee called the meeting, but C.F.P.A. was
there at its initiation. Individuals in industry spoke out in op
position to the various portions of Fritz's Forest Conservancy Act,
and after a day's argument, Bill Rosecrans said (and the Committee
concurred), "We'll put a challenge to the industry. You present to
us what you think would be a livable regulatory act."

Fry: This was the original Committee, was it not?

50
WRS: Yes, this was the first Forestry Study Committee, in 1944.

Fry: "It met in the field four times for a total of eighteen days with
seventeen indoor sessions," it says in the report. So the chal
lenge from Rosecrans occurred during one of those meetings.

WRS: Right. Industry took Rosecrans1 challenge; it was a challenge

really to C.F.P.A. I, being the only one who represented C.F.P.A.
(and because I was employed by them), was delegated to draft a law.
I took the Council of State Governments' Act, which was a proposed
Act, as my basis. It was patterned from the Maryland Act and simi
lar to the original Maryland Act.

I called my proposal from the beginning the Forest Practice
Act. From that I developed the various phases of the Forest Prac
tice Act which I, knowing the industry and its ramifications, felt
the industry could live under. One of them was the establishment
of specific forest practice areas where there could be modifications
and they wouldn't be the same, which would be controlled by the in
dustry and where there wouldn't be any issuing of permits or licens
ing: it was to be a purely voluntary Act which I hoped the industry
could be talked into adopting and practicing.

After I had developed that and presented it to the Committee
with arguments, the Committee said in effect, "Well, here is a dif
ference. We like your Act; we like your proposal, we even like it
better than we do Fritz's Forest Conservancy Act, but there are
some features of Fritz's Forest Conservancy Act that we like and
that we would like to see incorporated in it."

That resulted in what I set forth in my comparison of what
the differences were and what we were able to keep in the final
Forest Practice Act.

Fry: What were the major complaints industry had at the San Francisco
meeting? When I read your 1962 speech on the differences between
your bill and Fritz's, I got the idea that one of the main things
was that the Study Committee wanted to include a lot of wildlife
management, stream and watershed provisions and make it a much
broader Act than what you aptly named Forest Practice Act.

WRS: It was much broader. The original Fritz proposal was really a

conservancy measure, containing the whole gamut of what we now con
sider forest conservation. However, the main study was made with
industry itself and forestry generally, without much consideration
of other conservation practices. That didn't enter into it.

The next year (1946) the new Committee that was formed by the
resolution was purely a Senate Committee with a lesser appropriation,
a Committee in which George Craig came into the picture instead of
Fritz. They delved into other things than what the original Com
mittee did. The original Committee confined itself primarily and

51

WRS : pretty near entirely to forestry, and they were not about to be
moved into other fields. They didn't want to run the complete
gamut. They were interested in the forestry angle of it. I know
there were some things in the Forest Conservancy Act that Fritz
wrote that would lead you to mingle forest practices and conserva
tion and would have injected other fields as well, which we didn't
want.

Fry: This would have set a policy.

WRS: We objected to it very strongly. After all, mind you, we were
finally asked at this meeting in San Francisco to really write
our death knell. That's what we were really writing. They were
asking us to write regulations for ourselves — something unheard of
before. It's never been done by an industry, this writing its own
regulations or a policing of any kind. It was somebody else who
wanted to regulate you, that wrote the regulations, not the person
who was to be regulated. That's the reason it was so open.

Our main objection to Fritz's original Forest Conservancy Act
was that it was getting us into the police state. We wanted it to
be a voluntary deal. If we were going into it and being a party to
it, we weren't about to write our death warrant by allowing ourselves
to be policed, hampered, and constantly under surveillance by a bu
reaucracy. We might just as well have taken the federal regula
tions and been done with it. We had a sympathetic Committee, for
tunately, who went along with us.

Fritz is another one of these individuals who has ideals above
just mere practicality. He has always been that way. That was one
reason why he injected those various things into his particular Act
that he presented to the Committee.

Fry: Who worked for the redwoods in this? Was the redwood industry in
cluded as part of the C.F.P.A. representation?

WRS: It was represented through the redwood members of C.F.P.A.
Fry: What about the California Redwood Association?

WRS: They were not represented as such. There was an overlapping. In
other words, all the members of the Redwood Association were mem
bers of C.F.P.A., so there wasn't any individual representation as
far as the Redwood Association or Western Pine were concerned.
There were many more Western Pine members than there were members
of C.F.P.A., but the major owners in the pine regions were also
joint members with C.F.P.A.

Fry: After you drew up the industry bill, did the men who were opposed
to it, like Dick Colgan and Swift Berry, come around or not?

WRS: Let me fill this in. After I had written this bill, we went back

52

WRS : to the Committee with the bill. They saw the differences and voiced
their opinions. There were some things of Fritz's that they liked
and there were some things they liked about ours. It was left to
us to sit down and battle out what should go into the final Act. Be
tween the two of us, whether you believe it or not, as stubborn as
Emanuel Fritz is, Bill Schofield was more stubborn than Emanuel
Fritz. I was able to prevail in so many things because I was re
presenting 85% of the private timber ownership in the State of Cali
fornia.

So he had to listen to me, and he had to give in on many things.
There were still some differences that had to be finally argued out
with the Committee itself in the final drafting. We both presented
our arguments for and against, and finally there was the adoption
of the Forest Practice Act.

Now, you asked about Colgan and Berry. All along, from the
very beginning, Swift Berry, Dick Colgan, and some others, were aw
fully suspicious of any kind of a regulatory act. They were also
suspicious of the Forest Practice Act as it was originally intro
duced, and historically the exact position they took has been proven.

Over the period of years, we have been subjected to amendments
to the Act, particularly last year"! Had I still been with C.F.P.A.,
I don't think all of the amendments would ever have been adopted. I
would have held more to J"he original bill. The C.F.P.A. secretary
who succeeded me, John Cm 1 3$&T, ^ I et much get into it because he
wasn't as stubborn as I was in the first place, and he was more of
a bureaucrat.

John Co I t-Jnon came out of the Division of Forestry; he had been
a career man in the Division of Forestry. I never could get my
viewpoint across to him, although he was my understudy for two years
before he took over my job. I was unable to indoctrinate him with
my philosophy. It was quite understandable that I couldn't. Never
theless, he allowed the individual interests, and particularly the
State Division of Forestry attitude and the bureaucratic attitude,
to creep into the Forest Practice Act.

The Attorney General's office was hardly involved in the origi
nal Forest Practice Act, but the role of the Attorney General's of
fice increased particularly in the modification adopted last year.
There were things injected in there that bear out exactly what Swift
Berry and Colgan and others who were opposed to the original law said
would happen. They claimed that this was what eventually was going
to happen.

When modifications and suggestions for amendment have come up,
I've warned the Board of Forestry that eventually this Forest Prac
tice Act is going to become what the bureaucrats want it, which is
purely a police measure, and private industry is going to suffer

53

WRS: from it. I said, "I hope I don't ever live to see that. I'm going
to fight to the last to keep it as much under control of industry
as I can."

Insect Control

Fry: I was going to ask you about the protection provisions of the bill,
because in the Fritz report there was a great deal of concern about
the damage done not only by fires but by insects. It was a known
fact that insects had been doing more damage than fires.

WRS: That fact developed from the field trips and hearings in 1944. After
all, we had always talked about protecting from fire, and it developed
that the insects and disease had been causing greater damage than was
caused by fire.

Fry: I think they reported six times more loss in board feet from insects
and disease. Was this a relatively new concept of needs for protec
tion at this time?

WRS: It was the beginning really of the time when the thought of forest

protection expanded into that kind of protection. After all, what's
the use of saving it from fire if you're going to have it destroyed
by insects and disease?

Fry: This was primarily the bark beetle damage?

WRS: That was the big thing. Of course, it had been known before. There
had been studies by the Forest Service. Rex Black was on bark beetle
study in the Forest Service right after World War I, before he joined
C.F.P.A.

\

Fry: We have the U.S. Bureau of Entomology and other government agencies

to deal with this, so why hadn't they done something?

WRS: The entomologists were not concerned with forest entomology. Their
entomology was agricultural troubles. It was just a neglected field,
that's all. Forest entomology was pretty much neglected — not entirely.
I studied forest entomology when I was in school but it was a very
minor course.

Fry: The C.F.P.A. then, I assume, also got onto this problem of insects?

WRS: They had always been on it but the local legislation didn't actually
start until later on. Finally, it became a matter which the Board
of Forestry took a great interest in. The industry had set up the
Forest Pest Control Council in 1947, which later was taken under the

54

WRS : wing of the State Board of Forestry. The Board of Forestry recog
nized them as an advisory committee, more or less a supporting and
consulting arm of the Board of Forestry relative to forest pests,
insects and disease.

Fry: What was the membership of this Forest Pest Control Council?

WRS: It was a rather loose group. Primarily it was composed of the
technical foresters in the private forest industry, as well as
those in the state and federal agencies. The forest pest committee
was formed in California. The Northwest (Washington and Oregon)
had a forest pest committee first. Later on, each individual state
forest pest committee became an arm of a joint forest pest committee
of the Western Forest Conservation Association, at the instigation
of W.F.C.A. The organization is controlled by an elected group.

California and Nevada are together in a single committee which
meets once or twice a year and presents reports to the State Board
of Forestry. When there are epidemic outbreaks of disease or in
sects which need immediate action, they call it to the attention
of the Board, and the Board, through its available funds and with
the assistance of the federal government, move in on the various
areas.

Of course, all this time the federal government has worked
on the white pine blister rust, and the government has also been
working on the bark beetles. In an outbreak in Yosemite where
insects were eating up the little trees in the upper Yosemite, the
federal agencies joined in a spraying program.

Now we have Forest Infested Areas, which are established by
law by the State Board of Forestry, in which certain areas the state,
the federal government, and industry all contribute to the eradica
tion or control of the disease when there is an epidemic outbreak.
It is not usually eradication but control which is accomplished.
It's been quite effective.

Fry: Was there a great deal of concern on the part of members of C.F.P.A.,
at the time of the Forest Practice Act hearings, that the major
problem in controlling insect infestation was that they couldn't
get owners of adjoining land to join in with any effort? Was it
this diverse ownership and lack of coordination that stalled coop
erative efforts?

WRS: I don't know whether there was any concern as far as industry was
concerned. It was a concern of the people who were interested in
the control of infestation. You could have an isolated area in
which you couldn't cjo ou1 <md do anything. In some instances the
State wenl in and did it for nothing.

Fry: Even though the State did not own the property and didn't have it

55
Fry: under its jurisdiction?

WRS: Right, they just went in and did it or had it done in some instances.
Industry wasn't and, even today, isn't too concerned. I think that
the pine people are more concerned in Oregon and Washington than they
are in California. We haven't had too strong an outbreak anyway, so
the concern isn't equal to what it is in Washington and Oregon.

I guess it's understandable because there isn't too much
knowledge about the problem. When somebody makes a statement about
eradication, they just don't believe it because they've seen infesta
tion all their lives and think that it is just one of those things
that happens.

Fry: Some of the statistics from the Committee report sound frightening
in the loss of board feet per year — 620,000,000 in 1944, as opposed
to 110,000,000 lost by fire.

WRS: Well, that doesn't seem to faze them too much.
Fry: It's not as dramatic as a fire.

WRS: That's it. It's not something that is visible. It's something

that is constantly going on and it isn't too evident, so it doesn't
enter into their thinking.

Fry: In cases of insects and disease, did industry in California ever
attempt to institute cooperative research with either the Forest
Service or the State and the Department of Agriculture?

WRS: Through the C.F.P.A., the Walker Fund was set up because the Walker
Foundation became interested in having something done by way of re
search on forest insects and disease. They gave an endowment of
$10,000 to the University of California, with C.F.P.A.'s other mem
bers contributing a like amount over a given period of years, which
enabled the School of Forestry to cooperate with the Entomology De
partment to support a single individual who works on these studies.

Fry: It's a kind of research chair?

WRS: Yes. That was operating until I left the Protective Association,

but in the last four years it has been dropped by the Walker people
and has fallen by the way as far as C.F.P.A. is concerned. The ini
tial effort got things started and since then, the University has
carried on. Through the nudging of the School of Forestry, it has
kept on with work that never would have been operated if it hadn't
been started in this way originally.

Fry: It looks as though the problem of bug infestation is not quite as
well developed on a line of attack as the fires.

56

WRS: Oh no, nowhere near, because, as you said, it's not as dramatic,

and it hasn't attracted the universal attention of the industry like
fire has. Now in the state of California, anything that burns is
called a forest fire whether there are any trees burned or not; it
just burns grass, buildings, or anything else. That's the setup in
fire fighting in California. They're a highly organized fire depart
ment for everything.

Second Interim Committee

Fry: Maybe you would like to go on to 1947 when George Craig became the

investigator for the Senate Forest Study Committee in the Legislature,

WRS: Craig became investigator in 1945 under the '45 resolution, which

lasted from 1945 to 1947; and in '47, the report was made, but that
was only a Senate committee. The report was less voluminous than the
'45 report, but it was a good report.

Fry: What were its legislative effects in 1947?

WRS: Very little emanated from it. It was rather the swan song for

Senator Biggar. It didn't have the effect that the two houses had
two years prior. It was purely and simply a Senate committee and
it didn't have too much influence.

Fry: Why was it a Senate committee when the other had been a joint corn-
mi ttee?

WRS: As I say, it was Biggar's swan song. They had exhausted most of

the available new information in the original committee of '44-'45,
which started in 1943. For that reason, there wasn't any real en
thusiasm on the part of anybody to continue with the thing. It was
just a Senate courtesy, granting $10,000 to George Biggar for his
swan song.

Of course then he really went off his rocker on that. He went
overboard for forestry. I think Emanuel Fritz helped him along be
fore he got rid of Emanuel Fritz. George Biggar used to attend
Board of Forestry meetings, and he would just rave like a madman
on a specific item. It was unfortunate.

Of course, there were some other things which entered into
George's condition that way. He has since lost out in the Legis
lature and it was a sad thing. George was a nice fellow and a very
ilodic.ited individual, but his mind was completely wnrpod on some
th i ngs.

57

Fry: This Senate committee made a half-hearted attempt to restore a

broader legislative base, for the Act to cover more conservation
measures?

WRS: Yes. By that time, George Biggar was trying primarily to pick up
the loose ends that were lost by the '44 committee. There were
some things that were turned down. For instance, the forest ac
quisition setup was rather inadequate.

The acquisition of state forests was another thing that stemmed
from the '44, '45 legislative study. That was another thing that
Vandegrift was very violently opposed to, purely from a financial
standpoint. Later, state forests turned out to be a bonanza as far
as the State of California was concerned because their money was
returned time after time.

Fry: From timber sales?

WRS: Yes, and they still have the Jackson State Forest.

Acquisition of State Forest Lands

Fry: What was the C.F.P.A.'s position on the acquisition of state forests?

WRS: We had a division in the C.F.P.A. The original idea was that the
State was going to set up a state forest in each one of the Forest
Practice districts. The State would acquire a certain amount of
demonstration land in which they could locate technical foresters
to study various and sundry ideas of forest management in a parti
cular type of timber and location. This was to serve as a pattern
for the industry of that district to use.

Well, they got off on the wrong foot. There are some very
questionable things about how the amount of money that was ap
propriated was acquired. The bulk of the money was spent, with
out too much consideration, in the purchase of one great big area
in Jackson State Forest from an individual lumber company.

There were individuals whom I cannot name and about whom I
have no definite proof, but I am sure that there were individuals
not only in the Division of Forestry but individuals outside of
the Division of Forestry, who profited quite considerably from the
acquisition of the Jackson State Forest area from the Casper Lum
ber Company.

If Mr. Vandegrift were alive, he would certainly concur with
me, and I have pretty good evidence that the presentation of the

58

WRS : big block of timber from the Casper Lumber Company was manipulated
by the Casper Lumber Company and certain individuals in the Divi
sion of Forestry whereby the State acquired land that the Casper
Lumber Company was tickled to death to get rid of. They were about
to fold up anyway.

Fry: It was cutover land with one species?

WRS: Yes. However, there was some merchantable timber, and some of it
was very old cutover land which still had very good merchantable
timber and from which the State has sold timber.

Fry: Casper Lumber Company made a great deal of money on it?

WRS: Casper Lumber Company made a great deal of money on it, and I

think the individuals who engineered the thing did too. That was
one thing that one particular member of C.F.P.A. was in on. Oh boy,
I pretty near lost my head over this individual. George McCloud
was violently opposed to the method by which the Forest Purchase
Committee, which consisted of the Governor, the Director of Natural
Resources, and the State Forester, rammed that thing through to the
purchase.

At the hearing in the Governor's office, I had no direct evi
dence that I could use; I had to more or less approve some of the
things that George McCloud didn't like. He never liked the fact
that I went along with the approval of the purchase. I really had
to go along because we had other members than George McCloud, who
was representing the Hammond Lumber Company.

Fry: Did you have Casper Lumber Company in C.F.P.A.?

WRS: In the Association, yes. The purchase turned out to be a bonanza
for the State of California. For years and years little was done
in the way of establishing any demonstration of management prac
tices. The State just held the property and sold some timber and
made some money on it. The State Board of Forestry became very
critical of the Division's management of the area, and they finally
moved in on the Division and got busy setting up research projects.

Having spent so much money on so large an area in the red
woods, there never was any other purchase made of demonstration
areas in other districts of the State. Industry was not interested
one iota in adopting any ideas developed. Industry figured that
they could demonstrate on their own lands to determine what they
could and couldn't do and that they didn't need a demonstration by
the State.

The State acquired the Latour Forest for a state forest area
in the pine region, which was already owned by the State Land Divi
sion, and which the State transferred from one pocket to the other —
from State Land to the State Division of Forestry— for administration,

59

WRS: There again, the administration was not too energetic but they still
have it.

There was never allocation of a demonstration forest in the
coast range pine and fir district nor in the South Sierra district.
For years in the redwood demonstration forest, there weren't any
real technical developments made, but there have been some started
in the recent past. There has been some experimental cutting, and
some stream clearance and programs like that. Together with the
fact that the State was about fed up with giving money to buy state
forests, further actions have been limited.

There was a lot of objection in the Legislature to the con
tinuance of appropriations of money for purchase of demonstration
forests to help out a specific industry in the state of California
which I think is a legitimate complaint. It's like giving industry
something on a platter.

Later on came an entirely different acquisition in the Big
Trees. The Native Sons wanted the acquisition of a state forest
for recreational purposes. It is not a state park. Although it
was to be used for recreational purposes, it was to be a state
forest. The Native Sons of the Golden West, and the Native Daugh
ters, wanted to acquire it for a Native Sons Grove.

They couldn't put it over, but they did succeed in making it
a state forest administered by the State Division of Forestry.
Specifically in the bill appropriating the money, it is stated
that the State Division of Forestry is to administer it primarily
from a recreational standpoint. The State Division of Forestry
is really in the park business.

Fry: When was that?
WRS: About 1947 to 1949.

Fry: In 1947, Joe Knowland, who is a big Native Son member, was head of
the Park Commission. I don't understand why this could not have
been put under the State Parks where it logically belongs.

WRS: The Native Sons weren't about to give it to the State Parks, and
I don't think the State Park people wanted it. It was all down
in Fresno County.

Fry: Near Sequoia?

WRS: It's the Mt. Humo State Forest below Sequoia; it's out of Porter-
ville. The State bought it from the Hume Lumber Company. Senator
Burns was from Fresno County, and he and I put the thing over in
the Legislature. The attorney that was hired by the Hume Lumber
Company to get the State to buy this land from the Hume Lumber Com
pany never gave us a dime. We worked our heads off and had it

60

WRS: through the Legislature before he knew it was up for a hearing.

He got there too late for the hearing. Daughter] He was paid by

the Hume Lumber Company. He later was made a judge. Strother Wal
ton was his name.

Fry: Was he in favor of this becoming a recreation area under the State
Division of Forestry?

WRS: He didn't care one way or the other. The Hume Lumber Company just
wanted to sell it, and they tried to get the Native Sons to sponsor
the purchase of the Native Sons Grove for a state park, but it
didn't work that way. Burns introduced the bill, and we pushed
it through to make it a state forest for recreational purposes.
It was down where there are some of the big tree redwoods.

Fry: You say that the main problem with state forest acquisition pro
grams was that they never did really allocate the money?

WRS: No, not for the demonstration forests. It was out of the picture.
About that time, the time of the acquisition, there was a con
siderable amount of un regenerated cutover land which, it was hoped,
could be regenerated through demonstration that it could have new
growth started. That was the primary purpose, but about that time
things began to pick up in the timber industry and there was not
the same demand for demonstration forests, plus the fact that in
dustry was very much disgusted with the way the State operated to
acquire this particular piece of land from the Casper Lumber Company.

Results of Forest Practice Act in Timber Management

WRS: When we first started the operations of the Forest Practice Act,

we found that there were many things needed beyond what was origi
nal I y in the bill. Of course, it was the plan that the Forest Prac
tice Act was to be kept on a practical basis, so that the timber
owner and the operator could maintain, with the minimum of restric
tions and regulation, an operation which would accomplish the pur
pose of the Act. We think it has.

Fry: By "practical," do you mean well-defined and specific?

WRS: Yes — workable. It was purely voluntary and we wanted it to remain
voluntary, but we found that there were recalcitrant operators so
we had to put some teeth into the law. The Sierra Club and the De
partment of Fish and Game would like to have a lot more teeth in.

Fish and Game are interested in what they think logging does:
that is, to what degree does it contribute to erosion and siltation,

61

WRS: You can't disturb the soil on any slope, whether you do it with
logging or whatever, without getting a certain amount of slough
ing off of soil into the streams, which is not conducive to good
fish propagation.

But there has to be a happy medium. Industry cannot be so
restricted that it cannot operate. Fish and Game would like us to
preserve some two hundred feet of timber land (which is the very
best timberland) in a strip along all streams, in order to protect
the water temperature and habitat of fish and game.

Well, that's just beyond the point of economics. There is a
breaking point as to whether you're going to protect fish or whether
you're going to protect the basic contribution which timber makes
to the economy of the state. For that reason, we have always tried
to make it purely a forest practice act.

Fry: This might be a good place to put in your ideas on the major dif
ferences in cutting practices and forest policy that exist among
these four Districts in California.

WRS: That of course is a determination that is self-evident to a forester.
For instance, we have in the Redwood District the principal species
of the redwood, with the associated species. In the Coast Range
Pine and Fir, we have the pine and fir species. In the North
Sierra, we have primarily the yellow pine, or ponderosa pine, with
some white fir and sugar pine. But the South Sierra, starting at
the break-off we have a little above the American River, is dif
ferent in the topography, climate; and the species is a white pine
or sugar pine with more association of white fir and other species
and very little of the pure pine. Douglas fir appears in all of
the Districts.

In the mind of a forester, that calls for a different kind of
cutting, management, and regeneration practices in each area. Re
generation, of course, is the primary function of the Forest Prac
tice Act. For instance, we have (and it's practiced in the fir
region of Washington and Oregon) a regulation that you can't se
lectively cut Douglas fir and leave these single stems of fir stand
ing alone. They'll blow down. Regeneration is brought about in
the fir regions through a block-cutting and a reseeding, or some
other way of regenerating than leaving seed trees.

In the redwoods, the redwoods lend themselves to a selective
cutting. The reseeding in the redwoods doesn't reseed to the red
woods so much as it does to the fir. You see, the redwood is the
final species of the redwood region. The other species first es
tablish the under story, which then becomes the upper story, under
which the redwood germinates, so eventually it would be the red
wood dominance again, over many years.

62

WRS: The regeneration is different, the topography is different,

the climate is different, and the rainfall is varied; so the method
of logging is different. It takes an entirely different type of
logging to log redwoods than it does to log in the pine region or
in the fir region.

There are so many differences: the soils are different, the
handling is different, everything is different. So to get a good
management plan for a type of timber, you've got to have a differ
ent management plan in the redwood than you do in the purely fir
stands, in the pine and fir stands of the Coast Range, and in the
Northern Sierra regions of the pine region, and in the South Sierra
pine regions.

It's a different type of management, a different method, that
any technical forester would use to get the regeneration which is
the ultimate end of the forest practice rules. That's the reason
we said you couldn't just establish forest practices for uniform
application for the whole state of California. It just wouldn't
work because the seasonal conditions, the rainfall, the topography,
all demand different management in different areas.

Fry: When you became head of C.F.P.A., wasn't there an act that estab
lished a minimum diameter for cutting, of eighteen inches? (It was
Chapter 172 [State Statutes] about 1943.) As I understand it, this
was across-the-board, for a I I species.

WRS: There had been a specific eighteen inch diameter limit, measured

six inches above the ground, throughout the state for all species.
That was instituted much before 1943, and it was superseded by the
variances in diameter limits in the various forest practice Districts.

Prior to the Forest Practice Act, we had also a law which
stated that a person could clear cut if he wanted to, providing
he was going to convert this area to some other use than timber
growing. This provision was carried into the forest practice rules.

Fry: Like range land?

WRS: Like range land or agricultural land. That law is still in existence,
and has been a bone of contention between industry on one hand and
the State Forester and the Director of Natural Resources on the
other hand. They claim that there shouldn't be such a thing; but
it's still there, and we want it there because we feel that other
wise it would be taking away the property rights of an individual.

If a timber owner wants to convert his land to something else,
whose business is it? It's the landowner's. We still are jealous
of properly rights. The present frond of society rn.iy eventually
m.ike him subservient lo everything society w.inls .ind not wh.rl he
w. ints, but so far, not now.

63

Fry: In a speech which Mr. Nelson delivered when he was head of Natural
Resources, he said that one of the major problems was that this law
did not provide any method by which the State Forester could compel
the landowner to convert to another use, even though he had sub
mitted an affidavit that he intended to put the land to another use
than timber growing.

WRS : A bond was proposed to guarantee that the landowner would convert
and he would sacrifice the bond if he didn't do it. We say, "No.
That's destroying private ownership."

Fry: Emanuel Fritz recommended this bonding in his Forest Conservancy
Act?

WRS: Yes, he did. Many of the owners might be honest in their belief,
but there are those of us who are still independent enough to feel
that private land ownership carries with it certain property rights.

We're just as strongly for that angle of it as the other people
are on Proposition 14.* That's the reason that Proposition 14 won,
because we felt that the right of private ownership was being com
pletely emasculated because an owner ought to control unless he was
infringing on the life, liberty (not happiness but life and liberty)
of the citizens. Happiness might be destroyed but life and liberty —
no.

After all, a man who has owned timber land for half a century
and paid taxes on it certainly has an inherent right to do certain
things with his property, a right that should be left inviolate.
Bonding would have destroyed it.

Fry: The key problem here would be those who honestly change their minds
after they clear off the land.

WRS: Yes, of course, and the Division of Forestry and the Director of

Natural Resources, we've always contended, made a mountain out of a
molehill in saying that there were hundreds and thousands of acres
that were being falsely clear cut in order to get every last drop
of blood out of the land and that they had never intended to con
vert it. We disagree with that. We disagree with it very vehemently
because we feel that most people that do that have a right to do it
and that they have a right to change their minds. Once they may
have had a good idea and a sincere one.

Something came up yesterday at the Board of Forestry in an
alternate cutting plan [a plan that varies from that provided by

*A referendum to rescind the "Fair Housing Law," which made it
illegal to refuse to rent an apartment to a person on the basis of
race, 1962.

64

WRS: the rules! that was suggested. There was an argument within the

Board relative to the fact that the man said that he put in an al
ternate plan that would have an extension of five years. But on
questioning, he was told that the alternate plan, plus his proposed
management plan, would not be consummated for ten years. One mem
ber of the Board said, "Well, why don't we make it ten years?"

He said, "I was told that five years was all I could have."
Then they started an argument, and the first thing I knew, I was
up there arguing with them on the basis that it didn't make any
difference if the man didn't complete it. All he was doing was
asking for a modification of a particular section, which had to do
with the cutting, not his management. There was nothing in the Act
that he was modifying. He was going to put a change in his manage
ment. All he was asking was that at the end of five years, ten
years, or fifty years, he be allowed to quit. And I said that the
man ought to have a right to quit.

Somebody said, "Well, if we had this for ten years and he
sold it before the ten years was up, then we'd make the new owner
carry out the program."

I said, "Yes, you would — over my dead body and everybody
else's, until you've disestablished the right of private owner
ship." If I make an alternate plan and it is approved by the Board
and I sell my land, that alternate plan doesn't carry over with my
sale to John Jones here. He doesn't have to do what I wanted to do
at all.

Fry: What does a person do who has not been able to comply with his al
ternate plan affidavit? Has the general practice been for him to
go before the Board again and modify it?

WRS: Yes, if they've accepted it. It has been done.

Fry: But if he does not go before the Board to modify it, what recourse
does the Board have to see that he follows the plan?

WRS: Here's the thing. A man says, "I want a permit to clear cut this
area, and under my modification, if you will grant me the right to
clear cut the area, I agree to regenerate this either naturally or
artificially so that I will have a stocking of young growth to a
certain percentage. To establish whether I have complied with
that or not, instead of leaving seed trees, I am going to stock
it another way."

The Board may make the life of his alternate plan long enough
so that they are satisfied that he has fulfilled that requirement
that he is going to restock it either artificially or through natu
ral regeneration to a point of stocking. Then he is off the hook.
But if he doesn't do it within the life of that contract, they can
move in and force him to do it. In other words, it is an obligation

65

WRS : for him to plant if it doesn't naturally regenerate, so that he does
get that stocking. They give a sufficient number of years and ex
tension of time for it to be stocked. But this setup that the man
had yesterday was entirely different. It wasn't a question of re
stocking. All he was asking was a modi f ication of one section.

Fry: Have alternate plan problems existed largely among the small owner
ships rather than the large ones?

WRS: No, that's the gist of it with all of them. Let me go back to my
original concept of the Forest Practice Act. You will note in the
Forest Practice Act, that if a company sets up a management plan
which will satisfy the aims of the Forest Practice Act, then he
can substitute in its entirety his management plan for the rules
of the Forest Practice Act — if his management plan is approved by
the Board. In other words, then he is bound to operate under his
management plan.

I had the concept and the idea that all of the major companies
with large land ownership would develop a management plan which
would far exceed the forest practice minimum required by the Act,
and that we would accomplish the desired results. But unfortunately,
that didn't happen. There were two reasons why: some of them were
not interested enough to go that far with a management plan develop
ment; others who had a management plan already could never get it
approved, because they were told by the local forest practice com
mittee and the Board that they weren't true management plans.

Fry: Why?

WRS: On a technicality more or less. There again were the differences
of opinion of technically trained people.

Fry: These were some of your larger companies?
WRS: Oh yes.
Fry: Which ones?

WRS: The biggest one was up in Plumas County, at Chester. Collins Pine
is the name of the company. They tried several times to get their
management plan adopted and were unable to get the plan accepted.

Fry: Why were they not considered "true management plans"?

WRS: On account of the technical differences as to what John Jones' con
cept of a management plan was and what their concept was. I main
tained, and I still maintain, that a management plan, if it sets up
their procedures and actions on how they were going to operate an
area and if it produces the results that are equal to or better than
the requirements of the Forest Practice Act, then it should be

66

WRS: accepted regardless of whether John Jones thinks it is a good plan
or not.

I had envisioned all of these big companies having management
plans, and that regulations of the Forest Practice Act would be ap
plying primarily to the small owner or the owner who didn't have
sufficient area to have a management plan or technically-trained
men to devise and operate a management plan, which was also a ne
cessity to a management plan. Your personnel must be of sufficient
technical capacity to manage it. For instance, Crown Zel lerbach is
big enough to have technically-trained men who can manage it, and
they do have them. But overall, it just didn't work out that way.

Now the alternate plan was an arrangement in which an indi
vidual who wanted to could accomplish the same thing in a little
different way. That would be an alteration of a specific, or sev
eral specific, sections of the Forest Practice Act. They would
abide by all other sections of the Act. It resulted in not only
the little man but the big company too going under the alternate
plan rather than the management plan.

Fry: The definition of what a "management plan" is, then, ambiguous.

WRS: It has never been defined.

Fry: And it is left up to the individual committees to decide?

WRS: The first determination is by the owner of the land: what the

management plan is and how he wants to manage the land to accom
plish those purposes. Then it has to be approved by the forest
practice committee of the district and their actions, in turn,
have to be approved by the Board of Forestry. And it never has
happened.

Collins Pine is the only one that has gone up against the gun
twice to get a management plan adopted. I always thought that
Pacific Lumber Company, Georgia Pacific (that used to be Hammond),
Arcata Redwood, Collins Pine, and Diamond would have management
plans. They do have management plans now.

Fry: And they're approved now?

WRS: No. None of them are operating under an approved management plan,
none of them. They each have a management plan, but never a Man
agement Plan accepted by the forest practice committee.

Let's put it that way, because there's no operation like
Diamond or Crown Zel lerbach. Now they've got a management plan.
They have all planned out the things they propose to do over the
years and how they intend to treat this and that, and it's all
worked out. All these big companies have it. They have to have
it. That's good management.

67
Fry: But it's not even approved by their own district committee?

WRS: No, they haven't submitted them. Collins Pine is the only one that
submitted, and their experience was so sad that no one else has
submitted any.

Fry: Do you think that there's an inherent difficulty here because of

the group of lumber companies which are essentially competing with
each other and one will have a man on the committee?

WRS: Now you're getting down to the real facts of the thing, which is
that there is more or less an ownership jealousy which is repre
sented, of course, by a diversification on the practice committee.
Company A, represented on the forest practice committee, objects
to Company B (who may or may not be on the forest practice com
mittee) being given the right to adopt their management plan. They
don't want them to have it. Later, the same thing may happen with
Company A. Company B may have someone on the committee who would
block the adoption of A's management plan.

It is really a defeat of the real idea which could have been
a much better solution, in my estimation, to good forest practices.
The major companies should have left the Forest Practice Act it
self to the little owner who didn't have the personnel or the
acreage to really have a management plan and had therefore to be
regulated to a minor degree to accomplish certain purposes of the
Act.

The purpose of the Act was the regeneration of timber-growing
lands. At the time we drew up the Act, I thought we would all go
out there and jump in at once and everyone would come up with a
management plan, but my guess wasn't any good.

Fry: But the larger companies then are on paper operating under the
forest practice rules?

WRS: Oh, they're operating under forest practice rules. They have to.
Fry: But their own management plans are not "alternate plans"?

WRS: There are two differences between a management plan and an alternate
plan. Some of them are operating certain portions of their area
under alternate plans on account of certain physical conditions or
difficulties — geographical or species conditions. But there are
none that operate under a true management plan which is approved
and f i led.

Fry: Under the terms of the Forest Practice Act, they don't have to
file a management plan, do they?

WRS: They don't have to file one, but they are subject to all of the

68

WRS: rules of forest practice as adopted in their district. They are
subject to operating under those unless they are able to convince
the practice committee and the Board that an alternate in certain
sections of the Act is acceptable. They can't make an alternate
which will cover the whole Act, just specific sections that they
want to change a little bit to accomplish the same purpose. All
the rest they must operate under as written in the Act and in the
adopted rules themselves.

Fry: At the time when the Forest Practice Act was being drawn up, did
the larger industries feel concerned about the postwar Influx of
small operators into California that Professor Fritz speaks of?

WRS: No. Now there's where Emanuel Fritz is wrong. In his paper that
he gave at Redding,* he lays the development of the Forest Prac
tice Act to that fact. Emanuel Fritz forgets that the influx of
all these "cut out and get out" operators had not really started.
They didn't come in from Oregon until after the Forest Practice
Act had already been developed.

It was postwar, it started in 1944. So you see Emanuel was
wrong on that. He put in his paper, which is a matter of record
of the Redding meeting, that this was one of the causes of the
Forest Practice Act. No, that wasn't it at all.

The primary cause was the desire to get out from under and
to offset the proposal of federal regulations. That's number one.
Secondly, the fact that the Board of Forestry and the Legislature
realized that there were some things which should be done in the
harvesting of timber in the state of California that would be
better for the economy and for the state. That's the reason they
had the Study Committee. It was in 1943 that the Study Committee
was established to study what the conditions were and to come up
with recommendations as to how the forests could be maintained in
the best and most orderly manner.

Fry: Then these little operators who came in presented a problem in

the enforcement of the Forest Practice Act, rather than serving as
a motivation for the passage of the Act?

WRS: They weren't the motivation; they came in and cluttered up the deal
so that we had to go through modification of the Act in the years
following in order to get at them. If you read the original Act,
you will note that it was very open because it was purposely written
without enforcement, only as a voluntary deal. An operator could
como in under the Forest Practice Act, buy up <) piece of timber
.'ind h.irvesl it any way he wanted to, and get ou h before anybody
could catch up with him for not conforming to the Act. For the

^Meeting of State Board of Forestry held in Redding, June 15,
1962.

69

WRS : first six months or year of the operation of the Forest Practice

Act, the policy of the Board of Forestry and the State Forester was
to be very, very lenient with all operations, to try to get the
operators into the mold of doing these things on their own even bet
ter than what the Act called for. That was always the incentive:
to try to get them to bend over backwards a little further and do
more.

It was not until we found out about these recalcitrants, who
were these individuals who came in for a fast dollar and got out,
that we were provoked to modification of the Act to the point that
we had to put penalties in as some way to reach them, so that we
could regulate them before they had done the damage. Once you cut
the timber off, it's gone and you haven't got anything left there
to regenerate with. Even though it is in the law that you are sup
posed to have seed trees, they didn't leave them. It was hard to
catch up with them.

Difficulties in Relations With Government Agencies

Fi re Control

Fry: Can you describe some encounters the Board of Forestry has had with
other government agencies in its supervision of the Forest Practice
Act?

WRS: A little thing arose here a few years ago, 1959 or '60, relative to
the handling of some fires in the pine region. The blame was upon
the U.S. Forest Service for the mishandling of the fire control up
in the pine region in the Sierras. The State Division of Forestry
came in for criticism too. There was an investigation which was
started by the Board of Forestry to determine who was at fault in
the way this matter was handled.

Fry: In the fire suppression activities?

WRS: Yes. It developed that the U.S. Forest Service, in the area of

private lands that they were supposed to protect, suffered from mis
management. Their own lands were mismanaged, and protection of lands
by the State Division of Forestry was mismanaged. There were cor
rective measures taken on account of this investigation by the Board
of Forestry, but it was instigated by industry because industry mem
bers were the greatest sufferers.

We obtained volumes of testimony at the hearings. The Forest
Service didn't like that too well. Mr. Connaughton, the head of the

70

WRS: Forest Service in Region 5, didn't like it too well because at first
he had made the statement, "Whoever is responsible for this is going
to have to pay for it." He kind of changed his tune, and rightly
so, to protect his own personnel, but that's been resolved too. As
a matter of fact, the Michigan-California Company was reimbursed to
the tune of about a million and a half dollars, for an escaped fire.

Fry: By whom?

WRS: By a contractor for the Forest Service. The Forest Service was neg
ligent in supervision, but the contractor had to pay it because he
was bui I di ng a road.

There was mismanagement and mishandling. The criticism, and
a justified criticism I think, by industry was that the U.S. Forest
Service move its personnel around so much in promotions that there
are rangers in charge of districts who don't know their district.
They don't even know how to get around. It's a just criticism.

In the old days when I was in the Forest Service, the ranger
lived and died in a district. He very seldom moved. He was a for
est ranger and that was all. He could walk all over his district
in the dark, blindfolded. He could get around; he knew it.

But the changing and moving of the personnel so much, plus the
fact that the Forest Service set up a brand-new way of fire protec
tion, caused trouble. They always considered every fire as being a
major fire, and they would go ahead and set up an elaborate camp with
cook-house and everything else before they would even send men out
on the I i ne.

That happened in one instance for which they were subject to
criticism. They established their camp and everything, then they
would go out to fight the fire. They had bulldozer operators who
knew how to operate a bulldozer on the flat, but when they put them
in the mountain country, they didn't know where to go or how to go
or what to do. There was very just criticism of their operation.

Fry: As opposed to this, what about the State fire department?

WRS: The State's Division of Forestry was equally guilty in one instance
too, in the South Sierra country. The Forest Service areas of
criticism were mostly in Modoc County and Lassen County areas.

Those are things that take place and need correction, and some
Forest Service and State people resent the criticism. You can't
very well blame them. The criticism set up quite a division between
the private timber owners and the State and the federal government
for a period of about a year and a half.

Fry: Was it more or less the State and the private timber owners on one

71
Fry: side and the federal government on the other?

WRS: No, the State Board of Forestry was even criticizing its own agency,
the Division of Forestry, because they were negligent. They were
getting top-heavy in administration — too many chiefs and not enough
Indians. But it has been corrected pretty well. The federal govern
ment has reorganized its fire-fighting program. The State did too.

Fry: Was this a typical incident in which the State Division of Forestry
found itself on one side of an issue and the U.S. Forest Service on
the other?

WRS: No. It was a case of the handling of two or three fires by the For
est Service and two fires by the Division of Forestry which, in the
opinion of the Board of Forestry as well as industry, were very
poorly managed. They were not well handled administratively.

The criticism originated in the Board of Forestry. However,
it probably stemmed from industry also because Ken Walker, the chair
man of the Board of Forestry, initiated the complaint, and he was an
operator and timber-owner. He was very adamant and insisted that the
Board of Forestry hold a complete hearing. There were fifteen or
twenty witnesses from various organizations and the timber industry
who testified and gave specific evidence which resulted in a hand-
slapping by the Board of both the federal Forest Service and the
Division of Forestry, which was not a reflection upon the Regional
Forester and the State Forester.

However, both the Regional Forester and the State Forester im
mediately set up a review of the charge and took another look at
their whole fire suppression setup. The result was that there was
a considerable change in both federal and state administrative poli
cies and actions.

Fry: What would you say was the major change?

WRS: Primarily the change involved a pre-season get-together of industry
or private ownership and federal and state agencies to establish an
outline of procedures to be used in the current year and also to
modify fire suppression plans.

The fact that the Forest Service was considering every f i re a
grandiose thing and setting up a regimentation like the army and
maintaining a full camp was the main difficulty. As a matter of
fact, there were industry personnel that had gone to assist with
the fires who were kept waiting for hours before they were taken out
on the fire line to do any fire suppression. There was a lack of
proper coordination and direction. The review resulted in quite a
bit of reorganization of programs.

Fry: Had there been any confusion at all about who was directing the
fire suppression?

72

WRS: Yes, there was that too. The line of command was very imperfect.
Oftentimes, fire suppression personnel would come in and make con
tact with the one who should have had some directional ability, but
he wasn't able to give it because the next man in line was the fel
low who was supposed to do the directing. The Forest Service moved
in equipment that was unusable because of the condition of the coun
try and terrain, which should have been known.

Also in getting to a particular portion of a fire, there was
no one, except industry people, who was familiar with that particular
area of the country and who knew which trails to use. The Forest
Service also found that some of the access, or fire suppression,
roads and trails were so completely blocked that they couldn't get
equipment through. They had to first be opened up; they hadn't
been kept open.

Many of the things that happened were sins of omission rather
than commission. The result, of course, was that the fire was able
to get an enormous stride ahead of them, so that it really became
a conflagration, which could have been nipped in the bud in the be
ginning.

There were instances of no coordination between lookouts, with
one reporting and no checking in with another to coordinate where
the fire was. Sometimes fires were reported by private landowners
to supposedly proper authorities of the Division and of the National
Forest Service which never apparently were logged and had to be re
ported two and three times before it was finally accepted as a fire
to which they were supposed to send men and equipment.

Fry: You're talking about both the Forest Service and the State Division?
WRS: Both the Forest Service and the State Division were negligent.

Fry: One of the problems, as I understand it, was that the man in com
mand sometimes did not make use of the information that the private
landowners gave him.

WRS: That's right, information that the landowners had and knew, in addi
tion to the fact that the forest ranger was in a completely unfamiliar
territory.

Another criticism that industry had was that quite a number of
Forest Service personnel were shipped in from southern California
who knew nothing about the terrain or the country of northern Cali
fornia. There used to be and still is a kind of a joke among private
timber owners about the so-called Zuni Indians and their great fire
fighting ability, who are imported for fire fighting in unfamiliar
country.

Fry: It's become legendary.

73

WRS: We think that the Klamath Indians or anybody else with the same kind
of training could fight fires just as well. The Forest Service
didn't utilize the men who were real woodsmen, familiar with ter
rain and adept at handling certain equipment, because they had to go
through this echelon of control just like an army. This was quite
an eye-opener to both divisions. They had become top-heavy, as I
said, with chiefs, and not enough Indians.

Fry: And some rigidity in procedure.

WRS: Yes. Over the years since then, these things have been ironed out
pretty well, and they are much improved. There is still perhaps
some individual criticism, and maybe we're over-critical. But
when you're about to lose thousands of board feet of timber by fire
which you feel could have been spared, you have to get a little bit
critical about the way they handled it.

Forest Practice Inspection

WRS: Then we had our difficulties with the Division of Forestry. This

is a criticism of the administration of the Division. When we wrote
the Forest Practice Act, the Division wanted inspection to assure
compliance with the forest practice rules. We had a woeful lack
and avoidance of inspections of operations, to the point that the
State Forester and the Assistant State Forester were using the per
sonnel, who were supposed to be technical inspectors, on everything
and anything (fire, for example) rather than on inspection.

They were also using rangers, assistant rangers, and personnel
who didn't know forestry at all and who were just fire fighters to
make technical inspections. We were very critical of it. The in
dustry supported the creation of these technical positions. We sup
posed they were going to devote one hundred percent of their time to
inspections of operations.

It went on this way a while, and then they asked for more funds,
and we even supported them for an additional supplement. The State
Forester was again taking them off the job and putting them on some
thing else. We were very indignant about that. He was putting them
on something else because he wanted them for the other job.

Fry: So it was a personnel shortage?

WRS: No, it wasn't a personnel shortage. He wasn't usinq Hie personnel
th.il luA li.nl who w«ro dosiqnalod to do Itto Inspections.

liy: Mul al I he same time he was calling for more money for inspectors?
WRS: Yes. We gave him a boost on it too. We helped him aqain on that.

74

WRS: Then industry was condemned because the Act wasn't working, when

the State Forester was using this additional personnel for jobs that
were not inspection work. That's when the criticism came.

Our big argument was that within the Division of Forestry (and
this is a thing that bothers industry) they say, "Well, there are
no people to enforce it, so we won't do it." The lackadaisical ad
ministration of the Forest Practice Act and the mishandling of the
personnel who were supposed to make inspections were the two main
reasons why the Act was declared inadequate and not filling the
need.

One constantly heard it expressed in open meetings by the Divi
sion of Forestry that it was an unenforceable act. That put on our
backs people like the Sierra Club, the Fish and Game, and everybody
else who felt the Forest Practice Act was inadequate. It really
was a problem.

Fry: Was this when Swede Nelson was State Forester, or Raymond?

WRS: Both Swede and Raymond. The fault was not one of commission but
omission.

Control Burning

Fry: Would you like to discuss control burning, the issue as it has
developed over the years?

WRS: I'll give you a little background on that, although the State For
ester ought to be able to give you a pretty good background of it.
With the setup in the Board of Forestry, the State has representa
tives from the livestock industry and the agricultural interests.
The livestock industry particularly has always been interested in
the burning of cutover land to develop grazing land. We've had
what we term "light burners," who without a permit set off fires to
burn out the brush on cutover land in order to establish a grass
cover.

The surveys and studies that have been made by the Soil Con
servation Service, the Forest and Range Experiment Station, and the
Forest Service, to determine what will and will not support a graz
ing area, have indicated that there are many areas that simply don't
lend themselves to the establishment of grazing land. Just because
one burns off the brush, grass will not necessarily grow, and vice
versa.

For that reason and in view of the weather and fire conditions
in the summertime, these proposed range areas burned by the "light
burners" have been quite a hazard to the control agencies.

75

WRS: The livestock interests have always wanted to get all of these
areas burned off. They have always wanted a law, or permission, or
a position by the State Division of Forestry of setting up and regu
lating a controlled burning of the area in order to avoid conflagra
tions as well as to get the lands cleared. The Division of Forestry,
and rightly so I think, has fought off the establishment of provi
sions that would require them to furnish the stand-by crews for these
controlled burns, because it is quite expensive and it has been his
torically proven that many fires escape even with controls around it.

However, we have in the law at the present time a provision
that the grazers can form a district and can establish certain con
trol lines to control the fire and develop a plan or program of how
they are going to burn off one of these areas to establish a grass
cover. Sometimes they reseed artificially and sometimes they let
natural reseeding of the grass take place.

There is a provision whereby the State Division of Forestry
can, if available, supply a certain amount of stand-by fire fighting
equipment to prevent the escape of this fire from the area which has
been designated and prepared by these ranchers. The State also ad
vises them as to the best method to establish control lines, where
they should be, and how the burning should be done.

Actually going in and operating a control burn of these areas
the State has been avoided. It's not in the law. The ranchers
would like to have it in the law, but it has never been provided.
That is the reason there is a constant pressure for State partici
pation on the part of the livestock men. They want the responsi
bility of the burn to be entirely in the hands of the Division of
Forestry, which the Board of Forestry has never acquiesced to and
never will.

The State Department of Fish and Game

Fry: Can you describe your relations with other agencies interested in
the natural world — like the State Department of Fish and Game and
the Associated Sportsmen?

WRS: We maintained a pretty amiable and reasonable association with the
representatives of the Fish and Game people and the Associated
Sportsmen. If we had no one to deal with other than the Sportsmen,
we could get along pretty well. It was the Fish and Game, the
over-dedicated bureaucrat, we called it, who is trying to promote
things that sometimes they know nothing about.

We have a peculiar situation in California as far as our fish
and game laws and operation is concerned. For many, many years,
they have operated through the complete control by the Legislature.

76

WRS : Then that was taken away from the Legislature and set up under a

Fish and Game Commission. The Legislature just dropped out of the
picture as far as regulations are concerned.

At one time in California, about half the legislation which was
introduced was fish and game legislation because it was a pretty good
vehicle for the politician to use for reelection. But in the Legis
lature in the past few years, there are still some people who are
not very friendly to Fish and Game because the Department personnel
are dedicated scientists in a particular line, and sometimes they
can't see any further than their own little research project.

Fry: These are Fish and Game biologists?

WRS: Yes. They don't have any real answers. The sardine situation is

an example, and presently they're talking about the salmon. I talked
with a man just yesterday who has for many, many years owned property
at the very head of a small trickling stream, which runs fairly well
in the freshet time of the year, but which just becomes a trickle
at other times. He dammed it up and made a reservoir. He thought
that perhaps he should have water rights, which he should obtain
from the state: the rights to the water that originated on or flowed
through his land in this particular drainage.

He was doing fine until all of a sudden the Fish and Game ap
peared. They are about to make him tear out his dam to let the water
flow in this drainage, because they say it prohibits the salmon and
steelhead from getting up there to spawn. Well, they couldn't go
up there if they had four legs, because they can't get up that far.
There isn't enough water to carry them up there. That's just one
story of what the Fish and Game do.

They are so unreasonable that they say because you're logging
at the very head of a drainage that if you drop a tree down in that
drain, you're obstructing the flow of water and prohibiting the fish
from getting up and down the stream. That's the reason why we al
ways had to fight them in the Legislature when Fish and Game intro
duced bills to which we objected.

We wrote in the law that the courts were to determine what was
a reasonable requirement and whether a logger should be prohibited
crossing a drainage in any way, either by bridging it or fording it.
Of course, the logical location for a sawmill is often in the bot
tom of a draw.

The Department of Fish and Game was not willing to permit some
detrimental effects to take place which would be rectified by nature
very shortly after logging moved out of that area, as it has been in
the past. The Department of Fish and Game attributed much of nature's
own action (the abnormal rainstorms that we had in 1955 and again
the floods of two years ago) to logging, or rather blamed the

77

WRS: siltation on logging. But you can't attribute it to logging. The
Department always blames the loggers for erosion and flood damage
where there never has been any logging. The Department claims some
six thousand miles of streams have been obstructed by logging to the
detriment of the fish; yet we can't understand why the actual pro
duction of salmon and steelhead in some of these areas has increased
rather than decreased.

Fry: Did you find it easier to work with the Fish and Game people when
they had the Commission or when they were under the Legislature?

WRS: It was easier to work through the Legislature than it is through
the Commission because the Commission has members so biased that
they are for fish only and to hell with the people. Timber owners
take the opposite position: to hell with the fish, get your fish
off of our land, out of our streams, and out of our hair. The Com
mission is really governed primarily by the Department and its dic
tates.

Fry: Do you mean that the Department selects the Commissioners?

WRS: No. The Commission is dependent on the Department for its informa
tion, plus the fact that the Commission is often appointed from
those people who are ultra ultra fish and game and wildlife people,
to the detriment of any industry at all.

Fry: How are they appointed?

WRS: They are appointed by the Governor. It's a political appointment,
and of course he picks someone out of the fish and game and sports
men groups. There are so many people who are in Sacramento promot
ing fish and game interests that the Governor goes to that interest
group, the same as he would if he could, I think, (which would be a
natural thing, perhaps) appoint people from the Sierra Club to the
Board of Forestry, people who would have no background in timber
production which would qualify them for such a Board.

Inroads on the Forest Practice Act

Centralization Threats

Fry: Have there been any significant efforts to amend or modify the For
est Practice Act?

WRS: Last year C1965H, the Little Hoover Commission pretty near wrecked
the whole situation when they proposed to relegate the Board of For
estry to more or less an advisory group. The Commission proposed
that the State Forester was to promulgate all the policies and ad
minister them with everything else delegated to the Division.

78

WRS: Industry was able to stop that one, but whether we'll be able to
hold the line in the future, I don't know.

It was proposed to do away with the local forest practice com
mittees too, which was the fault of the forest practice committees
to a degree, and the fault of the State Forester in that he hadn't
followed through with more activity on the part of the committees.
The forest practice committees got to the point of acting by mail
or telephone rather than meeting.

It brought about criticism from the expert of the Little Hoover
Commission. The Commission said that they recognize that in the
beginning there was the necessity of having forest practice commit
tees, but they saw no reason why there was a need to have forest
practice committees anymore, and that all of the forest practices
could be originated by the State Forester instead of originating
in the district committee as provided in the Forest Practice Act.

This would have completely destroyed what we worked very, very
vigorously to set up: that we must have at least four divisions
in the state of California where there was a difference in condi
tions and operations. They also criticized the fact that we put
the private owners on the forest practice committees.

It would have completely destroyed the fundamental foundation
of the Forest Practice Act to have had the State Forester take over
those functions. Then you would have had a statewide law, just as
we had originally set it up to not have, or a federal law that would
be all-inclusive for the whole United States.

Fry: You mean they were going to do away with the districts as well as
the committees?

WRS: Yes. They might have had them, but in name only. They were going
to have the State Forester make up the rules. If he had made them
up, they would have been on a uniform basis. That would have been
the first thing any State Forester would have done if he had the
authority to do it, but he couldn't very well; he wasn't sufficiently
informed to draft workable rules. That's the reason why we estab
lished a safeguard by having local people on these committees who
were conversant and informed on workable rules.

Immediately after this threat blew over, the Board of For
estry had the State Forester call forest practice committee meetings
to review the rules of their districts. The committees are now meet
ing regularly to go over any possible changes in the rules, with the
result that the current meetings are now being attended by representa
tives of the Fish and Game, presenting their big program that they've
already developed in the Fish and Wildlife Plan. That is a bureau
cratic setup if you ever saw one.

They were trying to incorporate all their ideas and make the

79

WRS: Forest Practice Act an arm of their administration. So far we've
been able to stave them off. Now we've got the Sierra Club coming
in and wanting to tell us what to put into our Forest Practice Act.
So we're always on the defensive on something like that. It gets
more and more that way as we get further and further away in our
Legislative representation setup from the grass-roots, the timbered
areas.

It remains to be seen what's going to happen under reapportion-
ment because representation in the Legislature is now coming from
population and not from the grass-roots. Our defense and support
will be to try to cultivate and educate these people to the point
that they don't completely by-pass the real things that we're trying
to do. That remains to be seen.

Fry: So the direction of the functions of the State Board of Forestry is
to take more and more responsibility in response to these group
pressures — and to get more centralized.

WRS: Now the Board is urging the forest practice committees to meet and
review the rules. The State Board of Forestry was not called into
consultation by the Little Hoover Commission. About fifteen minutes
was all the expert from the Little Hoover Commission ever talked
with the chairman or with other members of the State Board of For
estry as to the functions of the Board, and you can imagine what
kind of report you get from something like that.

So the State Board of Forestry is on the defensive too. They
have to protect themselves. To have them merely an appointive board
with no authority would relegate forestry to the period before 1945.

Fry: The threat from the Little Hoover ....

WRS: It's a big threat, both as concerns the Board of Forestry and the
forest practice committees.

Fry: This threat resulted in closer working then between the State Board
of Forestry and the district committees?

WRS: Oh yes. It resulted also in more direct action on the part of the
committees, as well as the State Board of Forestry. The Board also
has a personal pride in the fact that they are appointees of the
Governor to serve and to do certain things. There are specific
things in the law that the Board of Forestry is now supposed to do,
and they don't propose to be relegated to the position of a non-
pol icv-determini ng board. People like General Myer have had posi
tions th.it cdll for judgment.

lUit nil theso things come up. Now here comes the I i I I |e Hoover
(\nimii •.•;ion , which is doini] <jw<jy with Hoards dtul throwim] commi I U-x>s
out ami completely destroying the forestry pronnjm in the state.

80

WRS: The Fish and Game Department and Commission are trying to inject
themselves into the picture. John Callahan of C.F.P.A., as well
as some other people, are willing to let them come in to a certain
degree and are not keeping them out. They are telling them to stay
with their own rules and regulations rather than coming into our
Act and destroying its original purpose.

County Control Stymied

WRS: An amendment was introduced and passed in 1957 at my instigation,
through the aid of a representative from the Attorney General's
office. The Legislature enacted a particular clause in the Forest
Practice Act which provided that once the forest practice rules have
been adopted, they have, in effect, the force of law, and the con
trol and operation of forest practices and operations of private
forest land are exclusive to the State of California. (This is a
paraphrase. )

This clause stopped a big inroad or attempt on the part of
those who would modify the Forest Practice Act by going to the
counties and having counties pass ordinances which would control
and completely annihilate the principles of the Forest Practice
Act. Now they can't do it because forest practices per se (not
fire, which comes under general law all over the state) cannot be
county-regulated. They can't come in and regulate timber harvest
ing. They can't do it; it's exclusive to the State.

Of course, the amendment could be stricken out of the Act; we
were able to get that in the Act, and it got by because nobody knew
why it was there except John Morris of the Attorney General's office
and myself. We were just then being threatened by a deluge of county
ordinances which would have completely disrupted the Forest Practice
Act and would have permitted within a county ordinance the regula
tion of the forest industries and their operations. Ordinances were
being used to suit the whims of the people who were concerned, like
the Sierra Club, Fish and Game, and others, under the guise of being
a county ordinance.

Fry: I thought the forest counties were usually pretty sensitive to the
needs of the larger operators in the county.

WRS: The operators have a lot of influence in the counties, but the

counties are not "sensitive" to their needs. As a matter of fact,
the industry, generally and historically, has been the whipping-boy
of the county supervisors, because they were in the minority politi
cally 1o the point that the county could do whatever they wanted to
do in the w.iy of regulations and taxation.

We have had objections to the Forest Practice Act on the part
of some of our C.F.P.A. membership. It's developed over the years
that forest landowners were right in their objections and fears to

81

WRS : a degree, but, as I have pointed out to them from time to time, it's
better to try to control how you're going to be regulated than to be
forced into it eventually and have something that you just can't
live with. I don't think they had any real clairvoyance that en
abled them to determine what was going to happen in the future; they
were just fearful of it. Their fears have been borne out to a degree
but not entirely. The Act hasn't been completely destroyed yet.

Fry: Then this bill that you came up with for C.F.P.A. never did have
unanimous approval of its membership?

WRS: Yes, they accepted the bill, with some talk against it but not of
ficial talk. They were willing to go along. It was officially
adopted by C.F.P.A., although with some reservations on the part
of the dissidents. They didn't openly come out and say, "We don't
want it," but they said, "We don't want anything." That's what
they said. But since we had to have something, they went along with
it.

Timber Inventory in California

Fry: There was quite a bit of discussion in the Forties on the actual

volume of available timber and inventory and classification of land
in California. 1 guess at that time nobody really knew what the
volume of standing timber was, and the estimates usually were used
to either support or deny the need for more regulation of cutting.

WRS: There still is such discussion. You'll find that information in
the beginning of that mimeographed report that I prepared for the
Tax Research Bureau in 1932.* There's just a woeful lack of know
ledge. Still within the individual companies and in the state gen
erally, there's quite a variance of estimates, but the information
is much more accurate than it used to be concerning the total
volume. There has been and will be quite a divergence of figures
because much of the timber is still isolated and many areas have
old cruises that didn't consider volume and species that wo! [d be
considered today.

It's gradually getting into a knowledgeable grouping however,
because of the intensity and pickup in the local assessing of timber
lands. The counties themselves are acquiring this knowledge. They
have their own forestry staffs and are really getting into the vol
ume that was not a matter of concern before, because they

*SchofieId, William R., A Report on Timber Taxation in the State
of California; California Tax Research Bureau, November 1, 1932,
mimeographed.

82

WRS : interested in it. Thirty years make a lot of difference.

Fry: Right at this time the U.S. Forest Service was sponsoring a timber
inventory. Can you give me a run-down on that?

WRS: The Forest Service never had access to or made too much of an In
road into inventory of private timber ownership. There are seven
teen million acres of private timberland in the state of California,
which about equals the timberlands of the national forests, so there
is half of the timberland that they know little about because they
never had access to it to determine the volume. The result is that
there is quite a gap in knowledge in the inventory and even within
many of the companies themselves.

A company may have just held onto a piece of land that they
bought on an acreage basis, at perhaps fifty cents an acre, and
held it over these years. They've had perfunctory cruises or no
cruises at all unless they were to sell it, so their information
is indefinite.

In addition, we have an enormous volume of second growth on
the cutover land which heretofore hasn't been given any considera
tion at all. This is beginning to show up through the county assess
ment processes. There are some areas of land which were cutover in
the earlier days that have a greater volume than that of the original
volume, and it Is merchantable now.

Fry: In 1945 It seems to me that It would have been in the interest of

the large timber owners to make available the figures of their stand
ing timber. At that time the situation was such that if anything
was done by the Forest Service, you would have expected it to be a
promotion of federal regulation on the basis that timber supplies
were low.

WRS: The timber owners in 1945 were peculiar indivuals who just held
unto themselves many things for reasons that to you or me (maybe
not to me but to you at least) would appear unfathomable. You
couldn't understand either why they so jealously guarded this or
that when it could be so easily found out by somebody else. That
was their property and they didn't want anybody to know anything
about it. They very jealously held onto the facts that they did
know for sure.

Most of them in '45 were not too familiar with what they had,
but those who knew what they had were not about to disclose It to
anybody. They would keep it to themselves because it was a lever
as far as a purchaser might be concerned. They didn't want some
body to know just what was there or how much was there.

Fry: What about county timberland assessments? What were they based on?
WRS: Assessments were, and still are in many instances, taken on an

83

WRS: acreage basis or just a general over-all average which they didn't
want to disturb or disrupt.

Fry: But you said earlier that you hadn't had any trouble getting informa
tion for the Tax Research Bureau survey.

WRS: Yes, but my figures weren't the property of the State except in

total volume figures. Specific volumes were not available to the
State; it wasn't designated anywhere. It just entered into the
economic analysis of taxation.

Fry: It didn't enter into the levying of taxes either?

WRS: No, it didn't. It was confidential information that never got out.

Fry: In the late Forties, the State Division of Forestry was allowing
some of their men to help the U.S. Forest Service in making the
timber inventory, including private ownership. But this had to be
stopped because of protests from the ....

WRS: Yes, from the private timber owners, C.F.P.A. Industry objected
to the basic proposal of the Forest Service, as to the method to
be used and the disposition of the data. Industry objected to it
very strenuously. Ed Crafts, Assistant Chief of the U.S. Forest
Service, was very vehement that they were going to do it in a partic
ular way, and Industry was not about to let them do it.

We had the same controversy also in Washington and Oregon,
but the Forest Service men were able to get away with it up there.
They never got away with it here because the data was obtained by
the State but never turned over to the Forest Service. We of the
industry had gotten the Board of Forestry on our side to tear things
wide open and tell the State Division of Forestry, "You don't turn
that over unless such and such a thing is done."

That's the only way they could get it, by agreeing that the
Forest Service must use it for certain specific things and such
specific things alone.

Fry: But not for the timber inventory?

WRS: For certain specific studies within the timber inventory, yes; but
not to be a basic figure from which they could develop all their
fantastic projections. We didn't want it. The State Board of For
estry said the only way it would agree to turning this information
over to the Forest Service was if it was to be used for this, for
this, for this, (specifying uses) and nothing else. The Forest
Service was to accept it on those terms.

They wouldn't accept it on those terms, and they made a second
plea which the Board turned down. The Forest Service never got it.

84

WRS : It was too late to get a true inventory, and they had to rush like
mad to step up and interpolate the past figures that they had and
to make some very perfunctory field work analysis of their own.

Fry: The field analyses then were done through the U.S. Forest Experi
ment Station at the University of California, right?

WRS: The Experiment Station practically did all the work for the For
est Service.

Fry: Under Ed Kotok?

WRS: No, Ed wasn't here at that time. He was in South America with FAO
and came back later.

Fry: As I understood the controversy, you first protested to the Board
of Forestry on the grounds that the State Forestry Division did
this work for the Forest Service without the State Board's approval.

WRS: Yes. The State Forester had on his own initiative delegated his
personnel to get this information without ever having been in
structed to do so by the State Board. Of course, we hit a sensi
tive spot on the State Board when we pointed that out, and the State
Board immediately jumped on the State Forester. Daughter] Intrigue
within intrigue.

Fry: How about the figures for inventories on private lands? Do they
fit with the records of the state, county, and federal lands in
California on a survey like that? Or are there discrepancies that
show that some of the records give a truer picture than others in
land ownership?

WRS: Do you mean the individual determination by industry compared with
the federal? (Of course the state and county really do not enter
into the picture. It's really a division of private and federal
timber ownership.) I think that the estimates are good enough for
what they need. I don't think the Forest Service needed anything
more or that anything more would enhance any projects that might
be carried on from a purely forestry standpoint. It is not neces
sary for them to know it in any more detail than they do now.

Fry: The State Forester isn't concerned with timber inventory by the
State then?

WRS: I don't think it's their concern or that they have ever made it

their concern. The State Inventory in the Thirties was primarily
a taxation need for the Board of Equalization more than it was purely
a conservation deal. The Division of Forestry is Interested of
course; they have their own Ideas. But it isn't so essential, as I
view it, and I think they view It that way too. They make no attempts
on inventories of any extent.

85

LOBBYING

The Beginning

Fry: Could you give us a background of your own personal experience In
the "Third House"? What years did your experience cover?

WRS: To review briefly, my first appearance before the Legislature was
in 1931, when a resolution setting up a committee for the studying
of the tax situation in California was before the Legislature. As
I was telling you earlier, I was Interested in seeing the bill go
through, and the Secretary of the State Board of Equalization was
also interested in getting the resolution passed and adopted.

It carried an appropriation of $90,000 to set up a study of the
tax situation, which had been emphasized by the fact that local prop
erty taxation was becoming quite burdensome to the common property
taxpayer. This was during the depressed condition existing gener
ally throughout the country.

The Legislature agreed to this resolution setting up the study
for comparison of the amount of taxes paid by the common property,
assessed locally, and the utility properties, which were assessed
on the basis of their gross receipts for State support.

The resolution set up the Tax Research Bureau, comprising the
Governor, the Director of Finance, the Controller, and the Board of
Equalization. They in turn hired Earl Lee Kelly, who was a resident
of Redding and was in the abstract business, to be the director of
the Tax Research Bureau. He gathered around him a number of people,
at the suggestion of the Bureau members, individuals versed in special

A 45-minute video-taped interview of Mr. Schofield, based on
the material in this section, was made by the Regional Oral History
Office, Berkeley, in July, 1966, with Professor Peter Odegard as ad
visor. The Forest History Society later purchased a 16 mm. film copy
of the video tape for their archives.

86

WRS: taxable properties. I happened, because of my experience in the
timber and lumber industry, to be chosen the timber engineer for
the Tax Research Bureau.

Fry: Was that also your primary Interest in lobbying for it in the first
place?

Daughter]

WRS: No. At that time I didn't have any thought of being on the Bureau.
I later became interested in it to the point that I did work, after
it was passed, to get on the Tax Research Bureau. I was primarily
interested in It in the first place because I was concerned with the
timber Interests' payment of taxes, as I was then the planning en
gineer for Humboldt County. We were interested in it from the stand
point of what it would do for the County as well.

Fry: Do you mean county tax income?

WRS: Yes, income to pay for county expenditures.

Fry: And also its potential for alleviating some of the tax burden on
the timber owners.

WRS: That's right. That was my first thought, of course — the timber

owners that I had been working for before taking over this job for
the County. I had a few little differences with the chairman of the
Board of Supervisors. They wanted to do away with the county plan
ning commission per se, not because of individuals but because they
didn't like to have the planning commission dabbling in any of their
affairs at all, over which the planning commission had some authority.

In order to squelch the planning commission, they just didn't
appropriate any money, and so I didn't have a job. So I was inter
ested in the proposed Bureau from that standpoint too. The Bureau
was set up and started functioning in the beginning of 1932.

Fry: As timber engineer for the Tax Research Bureau, did you do any
lobby! ng?

WRS: No, not for the Tax Research Bureau. During the year of our Tax

Research Bureau activity, which was in 1932, there was no Legisla
tive session. The Legislature was meeting in the odd years and mak
ing a budget for every two years. The Tax Research Bureau was opera
ting in 1932, and they reported to the January session of the 1933
Legislature.

The report of the Tax Research Bureau brought about the sugges
tion that there be a change-over whereby the utility property would
be assessed by the State through some agency to be created, and the
value would be passed back to the counties of sites of the utility
properties. The utility property would then be taxed at the same

87

WRS: rate as other property locally, so it was to be an additional in
come for the county.

There was a very great necessity for educational funds, and for
this reason they set up the sales tax at the same time, which would
be used for school purposes. Originally, the sales tax was only to
be for a temporary purpose and use, maybe a few years, in order to
augment funds for school purposes.

The Farm Bureau and the Grange insisted that if there was going
to be a sales tax on the sale of personal property, there should also
be an income tax. The establishment of an income tax went along with
the establishment of a sales tax for the state of California. The
personal income tax was to get those people who were making money to
pay a greater amount to augment the funds needed.

Fry: This was put on a ballot, wasn't it?

WRS: It was put on a ballot of a special election in the middle of 1933.
The Legislature recessed for this special election. I was active
with the Board of Equalization in promoting this legislation. My
activities in lobbying really started with that, for the Board of
Equalization, when I took part in the campaign for the passage of
State Constitutional Amendment 30.

The proposition was passed, and the Legislature came back into
session to set up and pass enabling legislation that would set up
within the Board of Equalization the sales tax, the income tax, and
the Division of Assessments Standards. The Valuation Division in
the State Board of Equalization was to be the evaluating agency of
the State to place the assessment of utility property.

The Legislature gave power to the Board of Equalization to set
up the Valuation Division. That was the beginning of the Valuation
Division, which continues today valuing utility property for assess
ment purposes, specifying the operative properties of the utilities.

Fry: Your lobbying activities, then, began in 1931 in getting the study
bill passed by the Legislature.

WRS: Yes. In 1933 in the next session of the Legislature, I was lobby
ing for the recommended implementation bills, which were recommended
by the Tax Research Bureau.

Artie Samish and Other Key Figures

Fry: Whom did you get to know in these early days?

88

WRS: Everybody.
Fry: You immediately met other lobbyists and knew the key figures?

WRS: Yes. There were lobbyists in existence at the time; they had been
there ever since the very beginning of the State to a greater or
lesser degree. They were quite active. Of the group of lobbyists,
there were a number who had been there for many years.

Some of the old-timers were Charles Stevens, who represented
the Standard Oil Company; Monroe Butler, who represented the inde
pendent oil companies; Vincent Kennedy, who represented the Cali
fornia Retailers Association. He has a retired supervision of that
Association yet although he is not directly active.

Vince didn't come, however, until later. He was a secretary
to Governor C. C. Young; then he became a representative of the
California Retailers Association. There was Elmer Bromley, a for
mer Assemblyman who was a representative of the Southern California
Edison and the P.G.&E. CPacIf Jc Gas and Electric Company.!!

Fry: How did he feel about your bill to change the taxation routing of
uti I ity property?

WRS: I can't recall that; I'm sure that Elmer Bromley didn't represent
the utilities at that time.

There was also, in the years following, Walter Little, a
Speaker of the Assembly who later became the representative of the
steam railroads; Charlie Lyons, a former Speaker of the Assembly,
a very good one, who became the representative of the California
Motor Transportation Association and the Associated Contractors.
Charlie Lyons unfortunately went to jail later on for some other
i I legal activities.

Fry: This was not for his lobbying activities?
WRS: Well, indirectly.

Sam Collins, who was also a former Speaker of the Assembly,
became a lobbyist.

Fry: Did he represent any particular interest?

WRS: I would have to check that. Another man who was a former assembly
man was Kent Redwine. Since he retired from the Legislature he be
came a representative of the motion picture industry. An interest
ing thing is that a woman lobbyist worked with Kent and helped him
out: Hulda McGinn was an old-timer with the California Theatre As
sociation, an organization which is very closely related to Kent
Redwine's work. She retired a few years ago and I haven't seen or

89

WRS: heard of her since.

Another man, whom I already mentioned, Charlie Stevens, was a
highly ethical man, a very wonderful man, a man upon whom the Legis
lature depended a great deal for good advice, particularly in the

Senate.

Frank Agnew represented the insurance agencies; he was there
for years until he retired. Frank was another highly ethical man.
Colonel Blank, a very good friend of mine who is retired, represented
the Telephone Company. He was a colonel in the United States Army
in World War I. His services were sought after not only by the Legis
lature but by the Director of Finance, because he really was a budget
whiz. He gave a lot of good advice to the legislative committees.
He's still alive and lives here in Berkeley.

Jack Pettis was in the Legislature at one time, back in 1910
when the King tax bill was being passed. He was around the Legis
lature quite a bit, but I would have to look up who he represented.
He's been dead for many years. I knew some of the later ones who
are sti I I there.

I knew Artie Samish very well, and I've always thought that
they gave him credit for more things than he actually did, although
he was a pretty shrewd lobbyist and got a lot of money from his
supporters. He wasn't always responsible for some of the good
legislation that was passed. He would get on the bandwagon if he
found out it was a good bill; he was a great cl aimer.

He was of Jewish extraction, a poor boy who made his first
money by acquiring some interest in and control of a bus system be
tween San Francisco and San Jose. That was his first deal. He had
been a newspaper boy on the streets of San Francisco, but I think
he originally made his money by starting out in this bus situation,
and he made it pay. He was very shrewd. His primary supporters were
the race tracks and liquor people.

Fry: Could you give us a profile of the people he lobbied for? There
does not seem to be too much known about whom specifically he re
presented.

WRS: He represented the race track people and the wholesale liquor and

beer suppliers. He had many accounts that nobody knew about at all,
people who wanted something that money could buy. Artie Samish
would handle it.

Fry: Were these kind of ad hoc?

WRS: They were never declared accounts. Artie Samish never registered
when the registration law came in. In the very beginning when he
first came in he may have been recorded; that was rather perfunctory:

90

WRS : he had to register his name with the Sergeant-at-Arms in both
Houses in 1931. That was the law then.

Fry: Which meant nothing?

WRS: It didn't mean anything. When the 1949 lobbying bill was passed,
Artie Samish never registered.

Fry: He never did come back and register?

WRS: No, but he was there. He operated out of the Senator Hotel. Artie
very seldom went to the Legislature; he had a lot of lieutenants.

Artie Samish's success as a lobbyist was greatly due to the
fact that at the time that he became a lobbyist, prohibition had
just been repealed and the element represented by the bootleggers
and the underworld took up the "legitimate" business of operating
the sale and distribution of liquor.

During the time that they had been conducting their underworld
operations in violation of the law (prohibition), they were used to
"paying off" for the benefits received, to allow them the major
violations of laws governing what they were doing. So the people
in that business and in the underworld generally were ripe for Mr.
Samish entering the field of lobbying for them.

Possibly over ninety percent of those in the legalized liquor
business had been members of the underworld. This made it easy
for Mr. Samish to impress them as to his ability and for that, to
extract large sums of money from them to represent them in legis
lative matters. And he used this procedure of paying off for ser
vices rendered, in this case by certain members of the Legislature.

Having established such a reputation for being able to secure
favorable legislative action, as the years went by, Mr. Samish laid
claim to being the chief advocate of much good and legitimate legis
lation, and oftentimes laid claim where he had done nothing.

"Legitimate Graft"

WRS: Frank Flynn, a man who is now dead, was his chief lieutenant with
the liquor industry. Frank worked around the Legislature in Art
Samish's place. A man nicknamed "Shovel Nose," who operated from
Los Angeles, was one of Art's chief lieutenants and was the procurer
who brought in women for the legislators. He was the most nefarious
guy you ever saw. His real name was Bill Jasper.

There were others. Jimmy Sims used to bird-dog for Artie
Samish. Sims later worked for the State Board of Equalization, and
I 1hink that Artie Samish probably got him the job. He was n pretty

91
WRS : smart operator.

As a matter of fact, nobody knew just who all the lieutenants
were who worked for Artie Samish. He employed anybody and every
body. He had women aids. I have no way to prove it, but I'm quite
sure that he had legislators on his payroll as well as men who worked
on the Senate and Assembly desks. Jimmy Sims was one of the clerks
working on the Assembly desk.

Fry: By this he was able to control whether bills went to the governor's
desk then?

WRS: Perhaps. Jimmy Sims did all kinds of strange things. He would

shift bills around out of order, take them out and maybe even stick
them in his pocket so they never showed up. Joe Beek, Secretary of
the Senate, was accused of having done that himself, but Jimmy was
actually doing that. I know of one instance where there was a bill
which certain interests were anxious to have passed, and Jimmy moved
the bill ahead of others.

Fry: Timber interests?

WRS: No. I don't recall specifically what the interests were, but they
were outside of the State. Jimmy Sims took the bill (and this was
legitimate all right, but this was the way he operated), shoved the
bill ahead of others, and they passed it. In twenty-five minutes,
it had gone through the Assembly, was rushed over to the Senate, was
passed by the Senate, and was down to the Governor's desk before the
day was over.

Of course, the last day of the Legislature is when many pieces
of legislation get through, when the number of the bill is read and
nothing else. They just pass them in a hurry to get rid of them
before the clock has run out. That's the reason so much bad legis
lation gets through, through manipulation.

That is where your unethical lobbyists can really perform.
That is where "legitimate graft" takes place. Through various pro
mises they get pieces of legislation passed that otherwise would
not be passed and that might otherwise lay dormant for months. That
is not done by the ethical lobbyist.

Payment to Legislators

WRS: The purported fact that lobbyists would go to the bar, particularly

in the Senator Hotel, which had the most attractive bar at that time,
lay a hundred dollar bill on the counter, and walk away and leave
the change with the legislator who might be taking a drink with him
and who could pocket the money, are just fictions of somebody's idea.
It may have happened once, but seldom if ever did it happen. (The

92

WRS: original bar in the Senator Hotel used to be where the American
Express office is now.)

Fry: You never really saw anything like this happen?

WRS: Well, I have seen some money change hands but not at a bar that
way.

They say that in the old days, back in the Eighties and Nineties,
there used to be payoffs made in the basement of the Capitol in gold
by those who wanted legislation. Of course in those days a legis
lator got nothing by way of expenses or anything else, so he was
very susceptible to money. They were susceptible to money, even
when they were getting $100 a month with very limited expenses.
Now they're getting $6,000 a year with a daily expense allotment
of $25 or so, plus cars owned by the State which they are given to
use, and a lot of side benefits that they never got before.

Legislators aren't as dependent upon lobbyists as they have
been in the past. They became more independent and less susceptible
to money. You have seen in the records that MacMi I Ian just a year
ago was indicted for bribery, but he was acquited. MacMi I Ian is a
good friend of mine. I don't say he did or didn't, but I say that
he wouldn't be any different from a lot of others if he had taken
the money.

Fry: Some that are caught make sensational headlines.

WRS: Yes, and there are many of them that don't. There is many a way in
which a legislator is compensated. For instance, there have been
two instances after general sessions where trips to Hawaii have been
promoted with a charter plane and a legislator and his wife as guests.
Going along with them are members of the "Third House" and their wives
and friends.

The forthcoming money is never spent by the legislator; it's
somebody else's money. His whole fare and entertainment is paid.
Even today a lobbyist can entertain a legislator, if he is willing
to accept it, to a meal or drinks. However, if you spend more than
twenty-five dollars, you are supposed to report it, but if you don't
report it, who's going to tell it?

Fry: And you didn't have to report until ....
WRS: Until the lobby law went into effect in 1949.

I recall that lobbyists were supported by the people that they
represented, and they, in turn, did, without a question, give some
sort of an emolument to the legislators, perhaps through campaign
funds. That's still legitimate.

However, if you contribute an amount over one hundred doll.in.

93

WRS : to a campaign fund, the person to whom it is given must report from
whom it was received and the amount. Many, many times over the
years I have given $99.99 into the coffers of a campaign fund of a
legi s later.

Fry: I've wondered why people couldn't simply give many contributions
of $99.99.

WRS: Well, that has been done too, because it gets away from the fact

that they must report it. There is another method of support which
I and others have done. For instance, you say, "Joe, go down to the
printers and get your cards or billboards printed up and have them
send the bill to us." And we pay it. With that technique, there
is no direct connection with them, and that is legitimate expenditure,

However, a smart lobbyist never supports a candidate in the
primaries unless the candidate is an old-timer. There are too many
candidates in the primaries. You ought to see the book that the
Secretary of State has of candidates for office now. When they ask
you for support, the smartest thing to do is to say, "Well, we don't
support anybody in the primaries, because there are too many.'1

You have to be awfully careful to pick the right horse even in
a general election. If you support the loser and the winner finds
out, he's not going to be very friendly toward you.

Another gimmick which has arisen recently and which is played
to the highest degree is the so-called testimonial dinner, which
legislators and candidates for office put on. They blatantly and
openly send out letters saying that they are going to have a testi
monial dinner for Jesse Unruh (or someone) at $100 a plate, $500 a
plate, or tables at $1000 a table. They ask, "How many will you
take? Will you support it?" And they get it.

Unruh now has, I know for sure, better than a half million dol
lars, which was raised by a testimonial dinner in Los Angeles. Pri
marily, the money came out of the "Third House." There are many
"Third House" people who don't support those things or contribute
to them.

Fry: This would have to be declared, wouldn't it?

WRS: No. It's just a testimonial dinner, and the committee turns over
the money obtained to finance the campaign of the individual for
whom the dinner was given. That method is being played to death,
and many lobbyists are getting fed up with that means of obtaining
funds.

Fry: In other words, when you receive a letter for a dinner, you feel
that you don't have much choice other than to go because you know
that there's competition.

95

WRS: It's the pressure. They just take the whole list. Everybody who
is a lobbyist is listed and everybody gets a letter — from people
they never heard of, who never did anything for them and never would
do anything for them.

Fry: But you feel you might need to be on the candidate's list of con
tributors?

WRS: If you are going to stay as a lobbyist, you better have some good
excuse why. Your name is brought up before that candidate by the
committee. He is told that you contributed. That again is a cir
cumvention of the bribery laws. Again, it is legitimate graft,
which has so completely infiltrated both the Legislature and the
Congress .

It amounts to blackjacking; they just blackjack us into it.
I know people who have contributed considerable sums of money to
Jesse Unruh because he is Speaker of the Assembly and is the big
wheel and power. They would openly make derogatory remarks and
even condemnatory remarks about the way Unruh was doing this and
that.

I've always said to them, "Well, you guys are suckers. You
give him the money, and he gains his power by taking that money
and spreading it out judiciously among the other candidates for
the Assembly, so that he can then have those Assemblymen obligated
to him." That's the reason he has the control.

I maintain that Unruh can be brought to his knees by going
into his District in Los Angeles with that same amount of money
and financing a good, popular individual to beat him in his own
District. Then you're through with Unruh. But they have allowed
themselves to be sucked into it.

Smart lobbyists, smarter than I am, who represent the biggest
interests in lobbying in Sacramento, have been sucked in in just
that way. And I never was. My people never authorized me to sup
port legislators to that extent.

Patterns of Influence

Fry: You're talking about C.F.P.A. [California Forest Protective Associa
tion]?

WRS: Yes. When I was lobbying for them, I did support particularly the

county senators [non-urbanH. I put most of my eggs in the senatorial
basket because one house was easier to control than both Senate and

96

WRS : Assembly. In addition, it was a fact that we had sympathetic legis
lators in the Senate whereas we didn't always have them in the As
sembly. The assemblymen came from metropolitan districts and were
not generally interested in natural resources. So I played the
Senate, and so did many other lobbyists, like Don Cleary, who is
the lobbyist for San Francisco.

Don Cleary at one time used to say and, probably rightfully,
boast, "Well, I've got twenty-seven votes in the Senate." To have
twenty-seven votes out of forty is enough to move anything, even if
it requires a two-thirds vote. I used to twit him about it after
he lost his twenty-seven votes. He was very close to Senator George
Hatfield, who was quite a power in the Senate.

Fry: I understand that Hatfield and Samish were quite close. Is it true
that they had regular Friday night meetings?

WRS: Oh yes. There is no question about the fact that George Hatfield
was one of Art's supporters. George Hatfield and some of the rest
of them were awfully scared when Artie Samish was pulled up by the
investigation* because they were afraid that somebody was going to
sing and they'd be brought into the picture. They never were but
everybody knew.

It was brought out in the Philbrick Report that Artie Samish
had contributed to George Hatfield's campaigns and had supported
him in some ways. George Hatfield was an associate of Fred Wood,
who was the Legislative Counsel for many years. Hatfield was al
ways and forever going onto the floor of the Senate and saying,
"Let's get a legislative counsel's opinion on this piece of legis
lation." George Hatfield would write the opinion and Fred Wood
would sign it as Legislative Counsel,

Fry: How did Hatfield have this particular power over Wood?

WRS: They were law partners, associated in the legal profession. George

*See Senate Daily Journal, Fifty-third Session, April 4, 1939,
first printing. This is N. R. Philbrick's "Legislative Investiga
tive Report." Principal target was Arthur H. Samish, after wide
spread rumors of corruption in 1935 and 1937 sessions. Schofield
notes on his copy of the Report: On April 5, 1939, "Senator Seawell
moved that the Senate Journal of Tuesday, April 4, be corrected by
striking out the inadvertently entered Philbrick Report accompanying
the Governor's letter of April 3rd, on the grounds that said Report
is not a public document but a prejudiced and unsupported confidential
report of a private detective. Motion carried and such was the or
der." From the Senate Journal of April. Mr. Schofield carefully
retained his copy of the Journal that includes the Philbrick Report.
It is deposited in Bancroft Library.

97
WRS: was smart; he was a good attorney.

Fry: I guess a lot of compensation can also be passed back and forth if
you are a law partner.

WRS: There are a lot of evasions that can be made by a lawyer, particu
larly under the Lobby Act. Many a lawyer has lobbied in Sacramento
and has hidden under the blanket of not disclosing his clients, so
that they don't abide by the regulations. There are more and more
legislators who are attorneys; after all, there are too many practic
ing attorneys.

I have maintained and my experience has been that you will
seldom find an attorney who is very conversant and understanding
of many problems outside of the legal profession. One of the smart
est men who was Lieutenant Governor, Hans Nelson from Eureka, ran
for Governor but withdrew before he got very far.

Hans Nelson was a smart attorney, but in matters outside of
the legal profession you couldn't talk to Hans Nelson. For example,
there was an occasion when it was possible for the State of Califor
nia to have passed enabling legislation for participation in General
Land Office Survey completion. There is still a lot of California
that hasn't been actually surveyed by the General Land Office Survey.

With California participating with a very minor amount of money,
the final conclusive survey of the whole state would have been stepped
up. It was very easy for the State of California to have been a par
ticipant in that. I talked myself blue in the face with Hans Nelson
to get him to support that bill because it was so vital to the tim
ber interests.

Much of Humboldt County at that time was unsurveyed and poorly
surveyed by the General Land Office, and some of it still is. In
the early days of the General Land Office they would ride around on
horseback and throw a rock out in the woods, and wherever it lay was
the corner. The result has been many cases of litigation to deter
mine where the section corner and line was, or to require a resurvey.
As many as three or four section corners have been located for one
corner.

There are notes of the survey from the horse-and-buggy days.
The survey party would be in Eureka at the Vance Hotel, and they
would report going to South Fork, which is a long way below Scotia
(some forty miles from Eureka), to lay the lines and corners for
two or three sections of land and be back in the hotel that night.
With a horse and buggy!

Fry: When you mention a problem like Unruh's usurping some of the ''Third
House" 's influence, I don't understand why the "Third House" doesn't
have more unity here. Why couldn't you simply >iqree not to go, not

98

Fry: to accept testimonial dinner invitations?

WRS: Lobbyists all operate differently. Every lobbyist has a technique
that is not duplicated by the people who follow him or by others.
It is characteristic of the lobbyist to use any and all means to
get certain things for himself. It is the hopes of these people
who contribute to Unruh that they can get from Unruh the things that
they could perhaps get from individuals.

Fry: So your support is dissipated?

WRS: A lobbyist's support is dissipated, and I say they have been suckered
into allowing that thing to happen. It has never happened before,
and Unruh is just smart enough to develop it. He made hay while the
sun was shining on that. He has built around himself a wall of in
fluence — which has got some chinks in it now because he has ruled
with a high hand, generally to his own detriment.

At one time a couple of years ago, he forced the Legislature
to do certain things and kept them locked up until they did certain
things that they didn't like too well. His party was the majority
and his own people were the majority. Nevertheless, he created a
lot of antagonism, even among his own people. They didn't like
some of his tactics and don't like them now, but some of them have
to take it. They are now beholden to Mr. Unruh.

Fry: Who are the people you refer to as his own people?

WRS: I mean the people that he has financed within his own party — the
leg i s I ators.

Fry: What about the "Third House"?

WRS: He has no control over any of the "Third House," nor have they con
trol over him. The "Third House" is just hoping that they have a
certain amount of influence with Mr. Unruh because they have con
tributed. But that is beginning to show up rather negatively as
a matter of practice.

Unruh is bigger than his job right now. He's smart; he's a
political scientist and he knows how to operate. I would say he's
a national figure in certain phases and areas. But he is a very
ruthless individual. I think he has mended his ways in many ways
from what he was at first. I don't think he's quite the same as he
was, but he was pretty rough-shod. He's got control.

There is a reason why he didn't run for the Senate this time.
Unruh had the feeling that he was going to be able to move into and
have control of the Senate in the same way he got control of the
Assembly, and that he would have support, so that he would not only
be the controller but would either possess the seat which Hugh Burns

99

WRS: occupies today as President pro-tern of the Senate or be influential
enough to control it. He would then be controlling the Senate.
Then he would use his own followers that he has in the Assembly,
so that he would have control of both houses of the Legislature.

I have talked with others who are as familiar with the ways
things operate up there as I am, and I am positive that this is the
reason Unruh didn't run for the Senate: When the Congressman from
Contra Costa County died, and Jerry Waldie was the logical man to
run and declared that he was going to run, Unruh had then lost a
lieutenant in Jerry Waldie, a very powerful man in the Assembly and
one of his strong aides in the Assembly.

If Jerry Waldie went to Congress, Unruh would lose control of
the Assembly, and Jerry Waldie probably will go to Congress. In
addition, Unruh wasn't too astute when he declared that he was go
ing for both of them. He made a declaration that he was going for
the Senate and the Assembly. He had an interim of time to choose
one or the other before the ballot was made up.

When he declared that and everybody, including himself, thought
that he was going to the Senate, there were immediately two people
who wanted to take over his place. Both of them had been his lieu
tenants up to this point. One was Carlos Bee, from Hayward; the
other was Robert Crown, and both of them wanted to be the Speaker.
When Unruh declared himself for the Senate, each immediately decided
to build their fences for the speakership, a split which was created
between his two lieutenants.

That development was very bad because he was going to lose one
or the other in having to pass his blanket on to one of them. A
split in the Assembly between the followers of Robert Crown and the
followers of Carlos Bee didn't augur well for Mr. Unruh, because
he wasn't going to have control of the Assembly.

We have seen two factors now: one was Waldie, the other was
the split over the speakership. There is a third. George Miller,
the Senator from Contra Costa County, is almost as powerful, if not
more powerful, at the present time than Hugh Burns. Mr. Unruh was
not going to be able to work with George Miller because Miller was
going to see to it that Mr. Unruh would not have control of the Sen
ate.

Hugh Burns may lose out. There was a time a few years ago
when Hugh was unpopular to the point that if George Miller had been
willing to allow his name to be used, he would have been elected
President pro-tern of the Senate over Hugh Burns. But George Miller
at that time was quite friendly with Hugh Burns, and he wasn't about
to be made the pawn in that instance.

Fry: This w.is b.irk in the Kite MHies?

100

WRS: Yes. George didn't do it, so he lost his chance to be in control.
George now, in my estimation, is equally as powerful, if not more
so in some instances, than Hugh Burns. Hugh Burns has become less
popular; George Miller has become more popular.

Fry: I didn't think that Carlos Bee was a supporter of Unruh because I

thought that he and Unruh had battled quite bitterly for the speaker-
ship at one time.

WRS: They didn't battle too strongly.

Fry: They are still in the same camp in the Assembly?

WRS: Oh yes. Bee is a lieutenant of Unruh, although maybe an unwilling
lieutenant. Carlos Bee undoubtedly has become the lieutenant of
Unruh for political expediency, hoping that he can work along with
him until an opportune moment occurs. The opportunity was open for
him to become Speaker if Unruh had run for the Senate.

Of course, Crown is not too friendly with Mr. Unruh anymore.
Unruh put him on as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, which
is the most powerful committee in the Assembly. For that reason,
he is beholden to a degree to Unruh, but he is breaking away. I
firmly believe that Unruh is losing his power in the Assembly.

Fry: Have you ever known other speakers of the Assembly who carried as
much power as Unruh does?

WRS: No, not as universal a power. They never had the opportunity that
Unruh had to dole out the funds for campaigns. With this $600,000
that Unruh has, he expected to name a lot of the Los Angeles County
senators, which would also have given him support in the Senate.
There is going to be a big change in the Senate so far as control
goes.

There have been very powerful speakers. Take, for example,
Charlie Lyons and Walter Little, and what they call "Rule Forty-
one." Rule Forty-one is this: forty-one votes is the majority of
votes in the Assembly. Often you would hear them say, "Would you
like to vote in opposition to the Speaker's ruling?" That's a
threat. The man has been elected by forty-one votes or more to
that speakership. His supporters are going to stay with him any
time it comes to a knock-down and drag-out, so he uses Rule Forty-
one as his support. He can say, "I make this ruling, and if you
don't like it, we'll go to Rule Forty-one."

Fry: In California, the Speaker single-handedly appoints the committees,
doesn't he?

WRS: Yes, the Speaker does. Wo have a Rules Commit too, whie.h is another
powerful l>o<ty 111, it the Speaker appoints. Now ovorythinq has to

101

WRS : funnel through the Rules Committee before it can get an O.K. to get
out to the floor. They have the same procedure in Congress.

Another thing that Unruh introduced and another power that the
Speaker has is the assignment of a bill to a committee. Upon the
introduction of a bill, the Speaker, with the aid of the clerk of
the Assembly, would assign the bill immediately to a committee.
They would take into account the nature of the bill: a revenue and
tax bill would be referred naturally to the Revenue and Tax Commit
tee; a natural resources bill would be referred to the Conservation
and Planning Committee.

Now, however, a bill is introduced in the Assembly, and it is
held at the desk until Mr. Unruh personally (or one of his close
lieutenants) reviews it and decides which committee to assign it to.
It may be three or four days before it is assigned to a committee.
That is more of a control than has existed before.

Of course, if a bill is misassigned (assigned to the wrong
committee), the committee chairman can ask that it be referred to
another committee and the committee can agree that the bill be re-
referred. But once a bill gets to a committee, the committee con
trols it. There again is where lobbying comes in.

Processes of Controlling Legislation

WRS: This is a recent experience of mine. I was hired by the Morton
CSaltH people this year for a bill they had on geothermal energy.
The bill would change the leasing law of the State of California
so that areas larger than 160 acres could be leased by a company
for development of geothermal energy.

Larger acreages of land are needed for this operation than
are now permitted by law. The Morton people have conducted an ex
periment into which they have put millions of dollars at the Salton
Sea and they wanted to acquire a larger acreage there.

There was only one outfit that opposed this bill: the Signal
Oil Company. They were sort of a dog-in-the-manger because Mobil
Oil was also doing experimental work. Signal Oil had inherited a
little bit of the Kaiser land up in Sonoma County, where there are
steam geysers, but they didn't want anybody else to get into the
picture and have any rights to the development of geothermal energy.

The representative of the Signal Oil Company is a very close
friend of Hugh Burns, who is chairman of the Senate Rules Committee,
which assigns the bill. Instead of this bill being assigned to the

102

WRS: Natural Resources Committee, which is the committee that heard all
the testimony on geothermal energy, he assigned it to the Govern
mental Efficiency Committee (the "G. E. Committee") which is the
so-called graveyard where a bill is assigned when they want to kill
it. That Committee either kills it or amends it or handles it in
such a way that it is very difficult to get it out of the G. E. Com
mittee. Although Hugh Burns himself was a co-author of this bill,
it went to the G. E. Committee.

Fry: Why?

WRS: Because they were going to bury it. I told the Morton people right
away, "That bill is dead for this session of the Legislature because
it never is going to get out of the G. E. Committee." And it hasn't.

Fry: This is due to the influence of the Signal Oil Company on Hugh Burns?

WRS: Yes. Their lobbyists influenced the assignment of the bill to the
G. E. Committee when, according to all rhyme and reason, it should
have gone to the Natural Resources Committee. The G. E. Committee
had a hearing on it but they had their minds already made up. (The
G. E. Committee always makes its mind up before it has its meetings.)
They assigned it to an interim committee for study. It had a I ready
been studied. There isn't anything more to study about it. That's
all they know or will know about geothermal energy until the final
experimental exploratory work has been done.

To complicate the matter even more, I learned yesterday when
I was up in Sacramento that the interim committee to which the bill
was assigned was the Tideland Oil Committee.

Fry: So th i s is really under the control of Signal Oil?

WRS: Yes. I also learned that Signal Oil Company has made applications
to the State Lands Commission to obtain exploratory rights for geo
thermal energy on 480 acres of land in Sonoma County. They'll get
the exploratory rights, but under the old mining laws as soon as
an exploration has been made after leasing and the area has been
proven, the leasing of State lands can be for only 160 acres. This
applies to oil and minerals, and they have put geothermal energy in
that category.

There is a bill in Congress, authored by Senator Bible of
Nevada, which will make a similar change in the leasing law for
federal lands. The State bill which was introduced in 1944 has
practically the same kind of wording only it applies to the State
of Cal i fornia.

Fry: At that point you and the Signal lobbyist miqhf bo on the s.ime side
of Iho loiuo in Irvinq to qol .111 i nt RMSO in 1 tu> .mtounl of l.uid Huil
mi oh I ho I o.r.od .

103

WRS: We might, but after they have proven it. If their exploration

proves successful, they too would like to have more than 160 acres,
but right now they don't want anybody else to have it. The assign
ment of bills to committees is very important.

Lobbyists Working Together

Fry: I'm interested in how lobbyists work together for offensive and de
fensive types of legislation.

WRS: They work together because of common interests. For instance, tim
ber interests are quite common to the interests of agriculture in
many phases because they both involve land use. There is much that
the ordinary agriculturalist, the timberman, the livestock man, and
the large landowner have in common.

Where there are points of common interest, we immediately go
to those lobbyists who represent those that have the common inter
ests. We tell them about the situation — "We don't like this. We
do like this. Will you give us support on this?" or "Will you give
us support in opposition to this?" And they do because it is of com
mon interest.

On the other hand, these very same people have divergent inter
ests and perhaps entirely opposite interests. A smart lobbyist
doesn't antagonize the other guy, but he knows he isn't going to
get his support if he has a different view of a particular piece of
legislation. Let me give you a prime example of how you work to
gether.

Timber, oil, minerals are all natural resources. Historically,
the following has proven to be true: when somebody introduces legis
lation for a severance tax on a natural resource or on natural re
sources, immediately all the natural resource people get together to
fight it.

If there is a bill introduced for the severance tax of oil, the
oil people can find that they have the support of the timber people,
the agriculturalists, the mineral people, and others, because it's
just another step until the other natural resources are included in
the severance tax. We have had the oil people rally to oppose a sev
erance tax on timber. That's one way we work together.

Fry: You build up credit this way with other lobbyists, so you can count
on their support in the future?

WRS: Yes, we have that all the time. Of course, there are some lobbyists

104

WRS: who never get together, some that are diametrically opposed.
Fry: You wouldn't expect the Sierra Club to support timber interests.
Daughter]

WRS: The Sierra Club has never had lobbyists per se. They have influenced
legislators individually, but they haven't had a Sierra Club lobby
ist so registered. (We know there are some people who come up to
Sacramento who maybe should be registered.) But we would probably
never see eye-to-eye on anything with the Sierra Club. That's under
standable. They are too far out to the left.

Working the Assembly vs. Working the Senate: Pre-Reapportionment Days

Fry: You mentioned that you emphasized activity in the Senate and that
you concentrated on that.

WRS: Yes. In the first place, you can control your bill if you've got
support in one house either for it or against it. There hasn't
been too much legislation that the timber people have promoted.
We have supported many things that we think are good but the pro
motion hasn't been ours. Section "Twelve and 3/4" of the Constitu
tion was an exception along with a few others, but there weren't
too many.* Much of our work was defensive. If we can get one
house to stop legislation, we're safe.

Fry: But if you have legislation you want to push through, you've got
to have supporting votes in both houses.

WRS: I think that anything that the timber interests have supported and
that they have introduced are really worthwhile pieces of legisla
tion, for which you can get a lot of support in the other house.

There again is the give and take that you have with your "Third
House" support of other people. In other words, "John, go get so-
and-so to give me his vote on this bill," John being a fel low- lobby ist.
Or you may do some things for a legislator whom you'd ordinarily con
sider to be on your side. You say, "I'd like you to give me a vote
on this." It isn't too important as far as he's concerned whether
he gives it to you or not, so he' I I give it to you if it doesn't
influence his being re-elected or doesn't affect his constituency.
Over the years, you build up a friendship.

*Cf. p. 76, Timber Tax Exemption Const itui ional Amendment.

105

WRS: Just this last session, in 1965, I got support from an indi
vidual whom I have known since he first came to the Legislature.
He's known me and who I was. I've never asked him for a thing.
Even last year I didn't ask him for it; just out of the clear sky
he gave me support because he had known me for years and had known
who I was lobbying for, what my type of lobbying had been. He just
gave me a vote, which was a very sensible vote too.

Fry: I suppose this is one reason why so many of the lobbyists have had
some experience in the Legislature before they become lobbyists.
It would be rather hard for a person without any patterns of sup
port to have any influence. You have quite a few ex- legislators
as lobbyists.

WRS: That's the reason why the next session of the Legislature is really
going to be a boon to the individual who never has had experience,
because your fences are all going to be torn down with an entirely
new setup of representation to deal with. Even the old-timers will
have to rebuild their fences to a marked degree, what old-timers
are left, that is.

The geographical basis of representation has allowed the
domination by landowners or at least sympathetic support in the
Senate up to now. But now, on a population basis, that is going
to be gone, and it's only going to be those whom you cultivate,
or whom you may have known in the Assembly and have had a favorable
position with, who are going to help you on the Senate side. The
so-called "cow counties" are not going to dominate the Senate any
more. They can't.

Fry: Could you give a picture of those lobbyists who operate more in the
Assembly and those who operate more in the Senate, and why?

WRS: I personally know that certain lobbyists, like the railroad lobby
ists, seem to concentrate more in their operations and influence in
the Assembly than they do the Senate side. Years ago, Charlie Stevens
represented the major oil companies, and his operations were confined
almost entirely to the Senate.

It naturally fell to those representing land ownership, such as
the agriculturalists and timber people, to concentrate on the Senate
in their operations. You only have forty men to deal with in the
Senate, while you have eighty in the Assembly. Assemblymen come and
go while Senators continued and were old-timers. There is a certain
amount of prestige, whether assumed or actually there, and dignity
about the Senate, so that people like to concentrate most upon the
Senate.

'lorni- pl.iy ho Ih houso1.; I hoy h.ivo rorl.iin individuals who li.ivr
Av.ombly con I <H: Is .ind some who h.jvo Sen.vle conl.ids. The ones th.it
,ire able to have enough will operate both houses. That's the re<tson

106

WRS: you find duplicate introductions, both in the Assembly and the Sen
ate, of the same legislation, because if you lose in one you can go
to the other. Often they get their legislation through on that
account.

The initial house makes a lot of difference in a piece that
you are trying to promote. If a bill goes through the initiating
house, that victory adds weight to its support in the other house
when it goes to the other house. Each house may have its differ
ences in what it wants in the bill; also, you may stop it in the
second house. You can stop it better in the Senate with forty votes
than you can with eighty votes.

Those who like to concentrate on the Assembly do so because
they come from metropolitan areas, where they have more direct con
tact with the assemblyman and his constituents than they do with
those in the Senate. Those who come from the populated areas are
in the same position with the Assembly as those who come from the
"cow counties" are in relation to the Senate.

Fry: Because they need urban support for their interests. Railroads
are an example of this.

WRS: Primarily, yes. They are supporting these urban representatives
to a greater degree. Historically, the landowner, because there
are less votes in the rural counties, concentrates on the Senate.
The railroads are most distinctly the ones who concentrate more on
the Assembly than on the Senate, but they work both.

Fry: What about Vince Kennedy, for the retailers?

WRS: Vince Kennedy and his cohorts work more with the Assembly than with

the Senate. I think the insurance people attempt to concentrate more
on the Senate side than they do on the metropolitan side in the As
sembly. They work both of them; they don't neglect one. A good deal
of it depends on the lobbyist himself and how he builds his friend
ship. Over the years, you could concentrate on building in a cer
tain house through your gratuities and the things you do.

Building Gratuities

WRS: When Charlie Stevens left the picture, I took over Charlie Stevens'
favorite technique of putting on a dinner for the secretaries of the
Senate. Originally it was for the secretaries of the sena1ors. By
the lime Ohorlie retired and I took it over, I used to put on ,) din
ner tor tho secretaries of the senators. You would think you would
have forty secretaries. Well, I gave dinners for I02 gals who were

107

WRS : working in various and sundry positions in the Senate. You have to
be very careful about how you do that, for this reason: any legis
lator is a little bit jealous of what his secretary does, because
she may disclose things that he might not want to disclose.

You have to be very careful, and it's a very difficult matter
not to exploit that friendliness and friendship that you have. All
the gals in the Senate knew me because I was the sponsor for the
elaborate dinner they had every year.

Fry: Are you speaking of the secretaries for the individual senators?

WRS: Yes, but the girls at the Senate desk got into the picture eventually,
so that I was entertaining them all. It cost some money too, I'm
telling you; we really put on a banquet for them. But they got to

know me.

Never did I use that friendship except in this manner: if you
were a secretary for Senator Whozit, and I wanted to see Senator
Whozit, and I walked in and you were working at the outer office,
you would know me, and you would be glad to get me i n to see the
Senator when he was free.

That access to a senator is an important thing. That's the
only thing I ever asked from the secretaries. I never asked her
to disclose to me the inner workings of the Senator's operations
on certain bills or issues. Sometimes they would volunteer the in
formation, but I preferred that they didn't because I didn't want
to find it out in that way. All I wanted was to be able to walk
into Senator Whozit's office and have the secretary get me in to
see him, perhaps ahead of somebody else.

Fry: Did the secretaries get some pretty good gifts? I know they do
in Washington.

WRS: Oh yes. My gift was the dinner. I might give them a box of candy,
but some of them get elaborate gifts too. You've got to be awfully
careful how you treat the secretary.

Fry: You could get her in trouble with her boss.

WRS: Yes. She might get herself in trouble too by not being too astute
in what she said and did. Charlie Stevens worked it successfully,
and I watched him operate over the years. When he died, his suc
cessor, Al Shults, didn't do it; he was a different kind of an in
dividual, completely different. So I took it on the first year
after Charlie left. It was expected every regular session of the
Legislature that the girls were going to have a party.

I was a little smarter than some of the rest of them because
I had watched Charlie operate. I never sent out the invitations.

108

WRS: I went to the girl who was head of the secretaries in the Senate,

and it was her party. She invited everybody, made al I the arrange
ments for f lowers, decorations, entertainment, and food, and I would
just pay the bill.

Fry: Does someone like Charlie Stevens, who starts out by building up a

good pattern of support in the Assembly, eventually find that he has
a good pattern of support in the Senate too because assemblymen tend
to progress to the Senate if they're successful?

WRS: They didn't in the past because changes didn't take place so much.
Some of them switched to the Senate — Hugh Burns, George Miller,
Hugh Donnelly — but it was over an extended period of years that
there were moves up from the Assembly to the Senate. Assemblymen
came so often for just one term, after which some more popular guy
in the District would be elected. There was a big turnover in the
Assembly, where there wasn't in the Senate. (That was another rea
son for concentrating on the Senate.)

Fry: You spoke of the higher status of the Senate. In the passage of a
bill, did it help to have a senator behind it rather than an assem-
b lyman?

WRS: No.

Fry: Then this status exists outside more than inside?

WRS: It's traditional that the senators look down on the assemblymen

to a degree. The assemblymen hate to be dictated to by the Senate
in any way. Now, under the Unruh setup, there is a reversal. The
Assembly, it seems, is going to force the Senate to do something
about this constitutional amendment on reapportionment before they
are going to pass the budget. I guess they are going to be in ses
sion during the time of the election too.

After the primary, there are going to be a lot of recrimina
tions. There are individuals who will be back and who will be in
office until the end of this year. They will be lame ducks, who
will have been defeated by other individuals who have been their
colleagues in the past.

Just yesterday I learned that Senator Hugh Donnelly, the dean
of all the legislators, is retiring this year, and he has endorsed
Senator Begovich, who is running against Teale. One of those in
dividuals is going to get the nomination. The loser won't be too
cooperative.

Fry: They may lose a lot of strong men.

WRS: You may lose a lot of legislation too because there will be such
bickering and fighting going on. Additionally, there are some

109

WRS: individuals who are coming out of the Assembly who have ambitions,

like Assemblyman Mills, who is running against Senator Quick in that
district. Whichever one gets in, the other one will be bitter to
wards the guy who defeated him. You're going to have some trouble.
In some instances it wi I I be in the same house, and in some it will
be in the opposite house.

Fry: Next year will be your most interesting year of lobbying, I'll bet.
WRS: It will be but it won't be mine. I don't think I'll be back.

Effects of Lobbying Legislation

Fry: Would you comment on how a lobbyist's activities changed with the
changing legislative requirements for lobbyists?

WRS: There has been for many years some legislation of sorts which was
supposed to have controlled lobbying, but was handled usually by
each house of the Legislature. Until the time of the Phi Ibrick
Report,* the legislators and lobbyists were able to come in con
tact with each other pretty easily.

In those days it was very easy to make a lot of personal con
tacts. On the Assembly side, when I first went to Sacramento in 1931
and for a number of years, until 1938 when the lobby investigations
started, I was able to contact an assemblyman very easily. If he
wanted to talk with me, he would get the Sergeant-at-Arms to bring
a chair to his desk on the floor of the Assembly. I could sit down
with him at his desk while the Assembly was in session and discuss
what I wanted. Usually it was sufficiently important and worthwhile,
not just passing the time of day, and it was easy to talk with him.
Never could I do that in the Senate.

If I went into the Senate and wanted to talk with a senator,
I had to stand in back of the rail, not on the floor itself. The
Sergeant-at-Arms would have the Senator come to the back and I would
talk with him there. Later on, there were restrictions so that one
couldn't even go into the Senate.

The Assembly was a little slower with that particular rule. It
finally developed that one had to talk with the assemblyman in back
of the rail, in the rear of the Assembly Chamber. When the Phi Ibrick
investigation came up, things got a little tighter, and they began
to lock the Senate doors on lobbyists, so that one couldn't get in
to see a Senator in the Senate Chamber.

Ibid.

I 10
Fry: This was during the investigation, before the legislation was passed?

WRS: Yes. Then rules were passed. I think that 1949 was the year that

the first joint set of rules developed in both houses. These were

the rules adopted by each house of the Legislature in which they

had strict requirements of registering with the Sergeant-at-Arms
in the Assembly and the Senate.

In order to appear before committees or even to talk with the
senators any place, you had to be registered with the Sergeant-at-
Arms as a lobbyist. That was perfunctory. Many people didn't do
it; they didn't observe it too much.

Fry: You mean there was no provision for penalty in case of a violation
of the rules?

WRS: No, there was no penalty. As a matter of fact, since the enactment
in 1949 there are implied penalties and restrictions that seldom
have been applied. There have been some cases in which individuals
have been ejected from a committee or have not been allowed to
testify before a committee when, upon interrogation, they were found
not to be registered. Those were very few and far between, however,
and occurred merely because some assemblyman or senator raised the
question because he didn't like the individual, not for something
particularly in the law. There are, however, restrictions and pen
alties in the law for not registering. But registration has never
been fully invoked, and it's never been insisted on.

Fry: To the present day?

WRS: No. Artie Samish never registered.

Fry: Even after his own expose in Col I iers magazine?*

WRS: They didn't seem to think they had the authority to do it. That is
the fault of both the federal law and the state law at the present
time. You are dealing with the proposition that every citizen has a
right of petition and a right to appear without any restrictions.
They're very chary about trying to enforce and put on a penalty for
not being registered.

There is a requirement in the registration for monthly finan^
cial reports. There are a thousand and one different ways in which
these monthly financial reports are made.

Fry: You didn't have to turn in monthly financial reports until 1949, did
you?

"Uv.ler V.ilio, "'I In- Sorrel Hos<. of C.il i ti>i ni.i," 0<>_M i^J-,, Amur. I
I'M'), pp. II-H, ,ni(l Aixiusl ;'0, I'M'), pp. /l-'/'i.

Ml

WRS: Until 1950.

Some lobbyists disclose the full amount of salary they re
ceive, what expense money they receive for the current month, while
others — and this is particularly characteristic of the attorneys
who say that certain items are just "consulting fees" — don't even
give you a figure of any kind. Most lobbyists now report someth i ng
in the way of money.

Some report one way and some another. The result is that when
the newspapers get hold of it, they get it all garbled up. For in
stance, I got in the newspapers as one of the high spending lobby
ists during the month of March in Sacramento this year. They com
bined my retainer and the expense money which I was given, which was
separately set out in my report. But in reading the report, they
took a combination of the two, which put me among the top ten high
est spending lobbyists in Sacramento.

Fry: Did they not lump together the salary and expense money in the re
ports of lobbyists they compared you with?

WRS: Some they do and some they don't. It depends on who read the report

and how they interpreted it. I remember that when reporting was first
reguired, I also broke into print. Some of the people that I worked
for said, "Boy, you're a high spender," because there were other
things I had added to my report.

My work for the California Forest Protective Association wasn't
lobbying alone by any means, so only a portion of my salary was
actually for lobbying. The rest of it paid for other duties as
executive secretary of C.F.P.A. But the reporter, in reading it,
read my total salary and reported that. That made it look like I
was one of the big spenders, which I never was. I didn't have it
to spend; they didn't give it to me. They didn't limi_f_ me particu
larly, but I was smart enough not to be a big spender because it
wasn't necessary.

Fry: This might be a good place for you to explain how the assessments
were made among the various timber owners and how your office bud
get in C.F.P.A. was divided up between lobbying activities and other
th i ngs.

WRS: You might say that from its very beginning C.F.P.A. was a lobbying
organization. It was primarily set up as a fire protective organi
zation, and the C.F.P.A. assessments were based on the amount of
acreage which the timber owner had. As the years went by, more and
more money was needed for financing. Later, the assessments were on
the basis of acreage ownership, and those who were in the manufactur
ing business also paid an additional amount of so much a thousand
board feet for the lumber products they manufactured.

112

WRS: During the legislative sessions, much of my time was spent in
lobbying activities but it was only a small portion of the total.
It was so definitely a lesser portion of the total budget of the
Association that we were able to have the Association declared
tax exempt under the federal law, which it could not have been
had the major portion or any large amount of the total budget been
expended for lobbying purposes.

It was tax exempt because it was used for so many phases of
work which the Association did and which required my services as
manager. In order to keep the Association within that kind of a
figure, the Association used to pro-rate the funds on a daily basis,
that is, on the number of days the lobbyist appeared in Sacramento
and spent in actual lobbying. This divided it up more or less ar
bitrarily but apparently it was a sufficiently honest division to
be acceptable to the federal government.

Many lobbyists, of course, are lobbyists pure and simple. They
have no other livelihood; that's all they do. Their total salary
and expenses amount to considerably more than that of the average
lobbyist.

Many lobbyists appear in the Sacramento report as having spent
no money for lobbying, which is a bit incongruous because they spend
some of their time and they must spend some money. There are a lot
of people who just register, like some of these humane people who
are dog-lovers and lobby for the dogs, and who don't report any
expenses because there are no expenses which are reimbursed. Some
people go to Sacramento and spend their own money. I know that one
of the fish and wildlife lobbyists spends only his own money.

If a Sierra Club member goes to Sacramento, he spends his own
money because the Sierra Club has never registered or reported.
Sierra Club now has a new organization for lobbying which is pretty
well financed and which is separate from the Sierra Club, but it is
Sierra Club money that is used. It is separated so the Sierra Club
won't be involved, since it is a non-profit, tax exempt organization.
To avoid being tied in with the lobby work that was done, it is paid
for and operated separately by this other organization.

Fry: If you're lobbying for a formal organization such as the C.F.P.A.
instead of just a loose collection of members of an industry, do
you have to make a lot of changes in procedure to incorporate this
expense reporting into your monthly activities? Did you have to
put on a bookkeeper after the 1949 law was passed?

WRS: No, we handled that through office personnel.

Fry: Even before 1949, were you keeping track of expenses?

WRS: Yes, that always had to be done. It was merely dividing the expenses

I 13

WRS: and allocating it on a lobbying basis and reporting it as such to
meet the requirements. Among three hundred lobbyists, there are
probably three hundred different ways of reporting money received
and money spent, even today.

Fry: But you can't get any kickback on this except through the press,
is that right? Is there a maximum allowable expenditure?

WRS: There is no maximum. Some lobbyists spend $3,000 a month or more

and report it as such. There is no limitation on how much you spend.
However, you are always subject to having the federal income tax
people looking down your neck. When you are reported as having
spent $3,000 a month for lobbying activities, they might check to
see how much of that is reported on your federal income tax and
whether you were just reimbursed for actual expenses.

An unfortunate thing for the employers of lobbyists, particu
larly when you get a free-lancer, is that they are often paid for
lobbying when they don't do any lobbying at all. They just go to
Sacramento and have a good time. However, they are not very
effective.

Fry: I guess you've seen some of these then in operation?

WRS: Yes. Sometimes they ride on the coattails of somebody else in get
ting things done. They don't do it themselves. They might ask
somebody to do something for them. Some lobbyists have been known
to be in Sacramento who have never appeared before a legislative
committee or made any committee statements.

When they do any lobbying, they do it in a bar or somewhere
else in contacting individual legislators rather than appearing
before a committee. That's quite natural, because legislation is
usually approved or disapproved before it ever gets before a com
mittee.

Schofield's Relationship With Other Lobbies
Artie Samish

Fry: You mentioned that Samish was never seen around the Capitol.

WRS: He operated out of the Senator Hotel. In the old days the hotel had
a large lobby. I can envision him today sitting back in the corner
of that big lobby, one particular corner where he'd sit and "hold
court." It was situated so that everybody in the hotel, including
many lobbyists and legislators who stayed there, would have to pass

I 14

WRS: by. He'd "hold court" like a king back in that corner and pull the
strings from there. He'd have his lieutenants do the foot work and
make the contacts. (He wouldn't make any direct contact at all.)
He would assume direction and responsibility.

I think that he was an overrated individual. Lester Valie and
his report* that stemmed from lobbying practices was influenced by
the braggadocio of Artie Samish. True, he was influential, but I
don't ever believe that Artie Samish was in such complete control of
the Legislature and Governor Warren as he indicated he was in the
article written by Valie. Of course, Valie made it fictional too
in a lot of ways to make it interesting.

Samish was a great claimer. Oftentimes neither Artie Samish
nor his lieutenants would have anything to do with a good piece of
legislation, yet Artie would say, "See what I did, see what I did."
He'd take credit for it if he could. I've seen him brag about lots
of things that he didn't have a hand in at all.

Fry: I wonder if he was able to keep up wi+h exactly what he did accom
plish through his multiple agents.

WRS: He was pretty good about that.

Fry: Did you have anything to do with Samish?

WRS: No.

C laughter]

Fry: You tried not to.
WRS: I never asked Artie Samish for a thing.

Fry: He was primarily concerned with urban legislation, while you were
more closely related to non-urban interests.

WRS: Yes, he was concerned with the liquor and the horse races, things
connected with urban legislation. I have asked some of his lieu
tenants to get me a vote here and there on occasion because I knew
they could, and Artie was very friendly. He never took exception
to me.

I never played cribbage with him, but my friend, Al Knorp, who
recently passed away, used to play cribbage with him. I'd see him
lose fifty dollars just as fast as you can snap your fingers, play
ing cribbage with Artie Samish. There was something about him that
was sort of glamorous, and you couldn't help but admire the way he

*lbid.

115

WRS: operated. Anybody can operate that way but they have to play money
I i ke he did.

One time Artie Samish made a bet with one of his lieutenants
on a fight. In the old days, above the lobby of the hotel was a
balcony that ran all the way around the lobby. The lieutenant had
lost his bet with Artie Samish, and the penalty was that he was to
run a foot race ten or a dozen times around the lobby in his shorts.
Everyone heard about; it was all publicized. The balcony was so
crowded that it was a wonder it didn't fall down, and people were
lined up under the balcony to watch. Money Stavers was the man who
paid the penalty but he was game; he did it to pay off Artie Samish.

Daughter!
Fry: I take it that he did have a sense of humor.

WRS: Oh yes. There were a lot of things about him that you couldn't

help but like. You figured that there was a self-made man, and you
were intrigued by the way he operated. He was a man who made friends
and he had certain individuals who made spot checks of both houses.
He could put his thumb down and just turn it a little bit and things
would happen.

Fry: Did he pretty well control the Speaker in most situations?

WRS: I don't know of any Speaker who could be charged with being under

the full control of Artie Samish. He may have been friendly toward
him and may have done favors for him, but I don't think he was under
Samish 's "control ."

On the Senate side, the Lieutenant Governor presides over the
Senate. Our Lieutenant Governor was charged with being under the
control of Artie Samish. When Hatfield was Lieutenant Governor he
was so charged, but I don't think Samish controlled him.

Artie Samish passed out of the picture without too much of a
disruption. Lester Valie wrote of the braggardly way in which Artie
Samish said he controlled the Legislature like a puppet on his knee
and that he controlled the Governor. That made Governor Earl Warren
mad, and he immediately called a special session of the Legislature
to get the issue thrashed out and to prove that he wasn't controlled
and neither was the Legislature.

Fry: You're speaking of the session in which the Collier Bill came up.
WRS: Yes, 1949.

Fry: Did Samish ever try to stop legislation that you and C.F.P.A. were
behind?

WRS: I never ran into an instance when Artie injected himself into our

116

WRS: legislation.

Fry: You operated in different realms of concern then in the legislative
field.

WRS: Yes, that's right. We weren't concerned with the accounts that he
represented.

Fry: What about C.F.P.A. in defensive legislation against things like laws
regarding racing and slot machines?

WRS: We didn't take any position.
Fry: You took a hands-off attitude.
WRS: We just stayed out of it.

Labor

WRS: I had a very amiable relationship with labor and the labor lobby.
Only occasionally did we have any labor legislation that we were
particularly concerned about that affected the lumber industry or
timber ownership. I was able in every instance to negotiate with
the labor people: Neat Haggerty, the representatives of labor, and
Charlie Scully, their attorney.

We were able to amend out most of the legislation that was of
concern or harmful to the lumber industry. One piece of legisla
tion, for instance, was introduced by Mrs. Pauline Davis, who ac
cepted it from labor and the Labor Commissioner; it concerned the
payment of wages.

The bill as first drafted would have required that anyone in
the lumber industry specifically who employed people in their mill
must have a bank account in the county in which the operation took
place and must have in that bank account a sufficient amount of
money to pay off the current payroll. If they didn't have a suf
ficient amount, they were to furnish a bond to guarantee that the
worker, if he were to sue for his wages, would be sure to collect.

I was able to point out to the labor representatives that these
types of operators were not the people that I represented. I admitted
there were fly-by-night operators who came in with no capital to make
a fast dollar and get out, and would leave without paying the laborer.
But these operators did not belong to the industry group I represented,

Rut a number of the responsible operators who were members of
C.F.P.A. didn't have a bank accounl in the county in which they were
operntinq" Perhaps they were banking outside the slate, nnd the

117

WRS: pay check might have come from outside the state. It was onerous

for them to have to put up a bond. I got them to modify the law so
that it stated that the exception was owners of real estate within
that county, upon which a court judgment could be collected. Labor
accepted the amendment.

Two years afterward, they found that they had missed the boat
after all on that, on something I hadn't thought about. If a tim
ber operator owned a little 50 x 100 lot, it qualified as real es
tate, but it certainly would not have guaranteed the wages of a man,
should he seek payment through the courts. The labor representatives
came to me, and we very easily worked out an amendment to that law
to change it so that there was a sufficient ownership of land.

Fry: A minimum acreage requirement?

WRS: A minimum value, one that would support a court levy for the wages.
My relationship with labor had always been very amiable, and when
specific legislation like that came up, we worked things out very
congenially and very satisfactorily.

Fry: You didn't negotiate with the labor lobbyists, but went directly
to the labor officials themselves?

WRS: I negotiated with labor lobbyists and labor officials too. We never
took any stand on the matter of wages and workmen's compensation.
That was done by agencies apart from California Forest Protective
because we felt that we could not afford to spread ourselves so
thin in our activities.

At the same time, we had certain groups, like the California
Manufacturers Association, of which the lumber people were members,
which would openly and very vociferously fight labor legislation.
The C.F.P.A. never did, and I think that was a very good position
to be in.

Only when legislation specifically referred to timber opera
tions did we have any arguments with labor, and we were always able
to iron them out. That made it unnecessary for us to appear before
committees or before legislators in opposition to any particular
type of labor legislation, because we got our differences ironed out
before a bill got to the floor.

Fry: The advent of the rules which locked you out of the Assembly and the
Senate didn't really affect your work too much then, because most of
your work was done elsewhere?

WRS: No, it never did. When I was representing the Board of Equalization,
I appeared directly with a senator at the desk, but it was concerning
a specific item. I did appear before committees with our legislation
and in opposition to other legislation. Not all lobbyists appeared

118

WRS: before committees; they would try to accomplish what they wanted

beforehand with individual legislators. I worked before committee
hearings too. I would contact the members of the committee to which
a bill had been referred, discuss it with them, and tell them how it
affected C.F.P.A. members. The information which I gave them was
factual information.

Often legislators would recognize that there was legislation
before them which was of interest to the lumber industry. They
would come to me and ask, "Well, how does it affect the industry?"
And I would tell them. Much of the work was done to make them (the
legislators) fully aware of how specific legislation would affect
the industry.

Quite a large majority of the lobbyists today and the people
they represent are looked upon with respect by the legislators.
They ask them just what they used to ask me — for information — and
they wouldn't just arbitrarily go ahead with something that would
affect or might be detrimental to those interests.

There are some people who are in opposition to everything —
good, bad, or indifferent. They soon gain a reputation. I know
some lobbyists over the years who, if they were against something,
would antagonize the legislators enough so that the legislators
turned against the lobbyists. The legislators would be for it just
because they knew so-and-so was against it. They took the opposite
side.

Although every lobbyist operates differently and his approach
is different, I know that if it were not for the lobbyists, our
national and state legislation would be most terrible.

Fry: Since there are thousands of bills in a session ....

WRS: A legislator has to get information and there is only one place to

go — to the people who know. If a lobbyist is honest with them, they1 I
usually accept his statement. Legislators may not always agree to
support things that you might be for, but at least they'll respect
what you have to say. It gives them an opportunity to weigh propos
als.

There is no legislator who knows everything on the subject being
legislated. There is legislation in every session of the Legislature
covering most any subject you would care to name, so the legislators
are dependent upon the people who know for sound and honest advice.

State Agencies and Interns
WRS: In my estimation, the worst lobbyists are those who represent state

I 19

WRS: agencies, and I was once one of them. There is a constant effort
on the part of state agencies, as bureaucracies, to acquire power.
Most of them desire something police- 1 ike in nature in order to ex
pedite and help their enforcement of any particular law. They are
constantly harping for more and more stringent laws, like the fish
and game people, for example, or the forestry people. The State
Forester is not free from guilt either; he wants to be able to say,
"You can't do this, and if you do, you'll get a specific fine or go
to jail."

That's the wrong attitude to take towards regulatory legisla
tion because it often ends up with legislation like the Volstead
Act. As soon as you unconditionally forbid certain actions by law,
people are going to violate that law. You have the same thing with
highway laws, the speed laws. People just don't like that kind of
restriction. Constantly we have to fight the state agencies when
they want to make it easier for themselves and, at the same time,
rule the roost.

Now, unfortunately, besides the state agencies, we have so-called
legislative interns who raise particular hell with the lobbyists be
cause they think they know it all. These kids come out of political
science or some other field in school and think they know all the
answers. They have no respect for judgment or knowledge of the in
tricacies of a situation. They know the answer, and their answer
is right. Unfortunately, some legislators are taking bad advice
from their interns.

Fry: These are interns who are placed in a particular legislator's office,
or do they operate with the Legislature as a whole?

WRS: There are some who operate generally for the Legislature, and now
each legislator has an intern, an office boy who is supposed to be
a researcher for him. But as I told a researcher once, "You're no
researcher; you're just a statistician. You take what someone else
has done and put it down. You don't do any research."

They are difficult to deal with, which makes it hard for the
lobbyist because they do influence the legislator quite markedly
in some instances.

Luther Gibson, chairman of the Governmental Efficiency Commit
tee, has a specialist who may be a dyspeptic because he's the hard
est man in the world to get by. He influences the chairman of that
committee to the point that he is really the legislator. Whether
Luther Gibson knows it or not, his expert is the legislator. That
makes it difficult for us to try to do an honest job of lobbying,
and it is very essential and necessary that the job be done.

Fry: Before the <idven |- of interns, which has been relatively recent,

what was the biggest competition of the "Third House" in influenc
ing the legislators?

120

WRS: I think it was the state agencies.

Fry: Did a state agency usually have one particular man who was espe
cially adept at lobbying?

WRS: It would have a number of them. The Department of Education, for
instance, would dig up as many educators with doctorates as they
could, who would come to the Capitol and try to impress people with
their knowledge.

Fry: Primarily in committee hearings?

WRS: Yes, mostly in committee hearings. The state agencies usually
operated through committee hearings. That was one saving grace
as far as the lobbyist was concerned because the lobbyist had money
to operate with. He could take a fellow out to dinner or do various
things for a legislator that the state agency representative, in
most instances, could not do.

Some, but not very many, of the state agencies operated like
the lobbyists. Usually they were mainly dependent on what influence
they could have with a committee, but they were sometimes pretty
powerful with the committees. They were the biggest threat the
lobbyists had at that time.

Fry: They would primarily be concerned with regulatory legislation,
wouldn't they?

WRS: Primarily, yes. There is a constant desire on the part of a state
agency to take over and be the boss. They like to make the laws
too. There was a time when we lobbyists used to write the laws
that we wanted, or we used to write amendments to the laws that had
been introduced. We would draft them ourselves, type them in a
sufficient number of copies, and give them to the legislator. He
would simply take them and pass them over the House Desk.

Now, you may get authorization from a legislator to go to the
legislative counsel and tell him what you want in the legislation,
but the legislative counsel has to draft the bill. It is then given
to the senator or the assemblyman for introduction.

That is sometimes very frustrating. I remember once a few
years ago, at the very close of the session of the Legislature, I
went to the legislative counsel with a lobbyist friend who wanted
a change in a law. I knew exactly what should have been put Into
the bill to make the change, but without the practical experience
the legislative counsel's assistant didn't know what to do. He
drafted four different drafts without once hitting the point we
wanted to make. I could have drafted it properly the first time.

With all this delay in drafting, the bill finally never got

121

WRS: through. As a matter of fact, the poor lobbyist lost his job. He
had asked me to help him but we didn't have the time. The Legisla
ture adjourned before he could get the bill out.

Now, with no exception, a bill has to go through the legisla
tive counsel, which is a little bit unfortunate. If I wanted an
amendment, I think I would know how it should be worded better than
the legislative counsel ever would, because he is confined in his
legal knowledge and interpretation. Sometimes they draft a bill
or amendment with an entirely different meaning than we intended.

Fry: Is there some restriction which states that you cannot help a legis
lative counsel's assistant write a bill?

WRS: No, but the only help he will take is for you to tell him what
should be in it. Then he does the drafting and the wording.

Fry: So you cannot draft it?

WRS: Not anymore. You have to get a note of permission from the assembly
man or the senator, saying, "Please draft a bill in accordance with
what Mr. Schofield tells you he wants." We could much more easily
draft it ourselves, with the wording we want, particularly when
dealing with a technical subject.

Fry: Yes, one that takes an enormous amount of background.

WRS: It does require a background. The legislative counsel is just as
ignorant as the legislator is himself of many phases of business
and business operations, which the individual lobbyist knows forwards
and backwards. The lobbyist, therefore, should be entitled to do
the drafting.

Individual Senators

Fry: Was there any difference in the way you worked with various legis
lators after cross-filing was abolished in California? Did you do
more work through political parties after that or not?

WRS: We didn't work through parties per se; lobbying emphasizes individ
uals. You completely submerge your political affiliation when you
are lobbying.

Fry: Because you need the help of both parties.

WRS: I used to have lots of trouble with my own people, who were mostly
Republicans. It seems that there are more Republicans in the

122

WRS: lumber business than of any other political party. Many of them

thought that no good at all could come from a Democrat. I used to
constantly tell them, "We have more friends among the Democrats."
For instance, Edwin Regan, who is now an appellate judge, was a
Democratic attorney from Trinity County, but he did more for me and
for the lumber industry than perhaps any other individual senator.

01 lie COI I ieH Carter, who is a federal judge, was Senator from

Shasta County, and he is an example of the same thing. He and I

worked very closely together. He did more than others for the lum
ber industry in spite of the fact that he was a Democrat.

Fry: As campaign contributions lined up more along the lines of political
parties, didn't this influence the pattern of lobbyists' influence
in the Legislature?

WRS: We supported Democrats as well as Republicans.

Fry: You don't think that the whole "Third House" underwent any particular
change then?

WRS: Oh no. It is characteristic of a good lobbyist not to use political
party affiliations. You can't.

Fry: The division is along the lines of industry and particular interests
then?

WRS: That's right.

Fry: Who were some of the main senators who supported your timber legis
lation from the Thirties through the Fifties?

WRS: Senator Carter from Shasta County, Ed Regan from Trinity County,

jesse Mayo from Calaveras County, Senator Dan Williams from Sonora
in Tuolumne County, Senator Howard Williams from Tulare County — all
supported us. Although Senator Howard Williams from Tulare County
was an agriculturalist, he was very friendly towards our legislation.

I had an experience with Senator Randolph Collier when he first
came to the Legislature. He came from Siskiyou County, which is a
timber county.

Fry: Is this the Collier of the 1949 Collier lobbying bill?

WRS: No, this is Randolph Collier, the Senator (the author of the lobby
bill was an assemblyman). Collier was, and still is, a difficult
individual, even with his own colleagues. During his first session,
I could never get a favorable vote from him, and he was from a county
that was almost completely financially supported by the lumber in
dustry and the timber owners. I couldn't understand why he didn't
give us some help.

123

WRS : I knew he was a great friend of Senator Jesse Mayo from Cala-
veras County, so I implanted an idea in Jesse Mayo's mind. Mayo
was a good friend of mine, and I told him, "Jesse, Randy Collier
hasn't given me a good vote and doesn't seem to give me good votes.
The timber interests are going to reckon with him at the next elec
tion."

Within a few hours after I planted that seed with Jesse Mayo,
Randy Collier was looking all over the Capitol for me. He wanted
to know who the timber interests were going to run against him. I
just kept him dangling on a string.

I made a good friend of him and he really changed his ways.
I would go to him and say, "Randy, this piece of legislation affects
your particular constituents. You had better support it (or oppose,
depending on the bill)." He did very well. He is still a very close
friend of mine. The approach of a lobbyist to different legislators
varies. Collier finally became a supporter of good timber legisla
tion.

Lester Davis, a railroad and labor man, came from Plumas County,
which is another timber county. He died later and Mrs. Pauline
Davis ran in his place. Although Lester Davis was a labor man, he
took some legislation for me and worked for timber legislation for
me, to his own detriment in his own labor organization. He was so
good a friend that he did that for me, despite criticism of his fel
low laborers. Mrs. Davis is also a good friend of mine. She had
been his secretary and knew what he had done, and she carried on.

Fry: How did you get someone to take legislation against his own primary
i nterests?

WRS: The legislation was not against his primary interests, although labor
was not for it. It was not labor legislation pe£ S£. Labor was not
too strong for him to take a stand on that particular issue. But he
stood his ground. It's a surprising thing that you get support where
you least expect it. Someone who was opposed to the legislation
would go to a labor lobbyist and have him tell Davis, "Lester, you
should oppose this." But he, having given his word, stood by it.

When I first began lobbying in Sacramento, a man's word was
his word and was good. If either a legislator or a lobbyist said
he would do something for you, he would do it unless he came to
you and said, "Bill, I can't do it. I'm going to have to withdraw
my position on that." If a lobbyist told a legislator that such-
and-such was so, that word was his bond.

Now, a man's word is so prostituted that it's not even funny.
There's a great deal of double-crossing between legislators themselves
as well as between legislators and lobbyists and vice versa.

124

Fry: What brought about this change?

WRS: I think it is the type of individual who comes to Sacramento, both
in the "Third House" and in the Legislature. I think the whole
moral code of the American people has deteriorated over the years.
No longer is a man's word his bond as it used to be.

Fry: You could be a lot more sure of the status of any particular bill
in the Thirties and Forties than you can now?

WRS: Yes. If a man told me that he was going to support the bill or

oppose it, I didn't need to worry. I didn't have to go back to him
a second time. Now you have to ride them up to the vote, and some
times even then you don't get it. It's entirely different today.

It reminds me how when I lived in northern Montana in the early
days, the homesteader never put a lock on his door. A man going by
who was hungry and wanted a place to sleep or to build a fire and
cook a meal could help himself to wood and groceries. He would put
things in order and leave.

Then it got to the point that they would steal them blind, so
the homesteaders had to put locks on the doors. In a sense, the same
thing has happened to legislation. A similar situation is charac
teristic of the relations between legislators themselves and between
lobbyists and legislators.

Fry: Yet you had men like Samish in the old days. Was his word qood?

WRS: I never thought Artie Samish's word was not good .

Fry: He could still be trusted to do what he said he would do?

WRS: Yes, I think he would do what he said he would do. His was a moral
depravity, using money to influence everything, which is a little
di f ferent.

I view the situation with alarm, and I don't think it is con
fined to the state. It is a national situation. One of the con
tributory factors has been the ignoring of laws by citizens — that
is, the ignoring of various and sundry laws which they don't like,
like the Volstead Act. They have been allowed to violate laws for
so long without correction that the people are not honest even with
themselves. I don't even trust myself anymore.

[laughter]
Fry: Would you care to add any more names to those you mentioned before?

WRS: Lester Davis was an assemblyman. Hugh Burns is a senator now; he

was an assemblyman. Dick Dolwig was an assemblyman, now is a senator.

125

WRS : Senator Carl Christiansen, an outgoing senator who did not return,
became a judge.

I hate to name people and leave someone out. I could name
those who were not cooperative rather than those who were coopera
tive. They come and go, of course. Many who have helped me in the
past are no longer there. I think I had an amiable association with
members of the Legislature.

Fry: What about Hatfield?

WRS: George Hatfield was a man who had received some support from Artie
Samish. I never got to know Hatfield too well. He was an attorney
and a stickler for the legal angle of things. I don't think that
he ever opposed any of our legislation.

Fry: He wasn't someone you could go to to solicit support?

WRS: I never sought his support, but I know he got us votes lots of

times. Senator Charlie Brown was another great supporter of our
work. He was from Inyo County. All the country legislators were
for us and helped us out. Irwin Quinn, who is now dead, was one
senator who was a help to us.

I was having a little difficulty with Senator Way, who defeated
Senator Quinn in Humboldt County, but we always remained good friends.
I opposed some of Way's legislation. He was a susceptible individual;
the fish and game people could put anything in his hand and he would
introduce it. Then I'd have an awful time getting it killed.

Fry: Who were some of the others who were difficult but who were from

the counties that you were dependent on? Where did your opposition
come f rom?

WRS: We didn't have any opposition. J_ didn't have any; I retired from
my job at just the right time.

Fry: You mean before all this national parks legislation got started in
the redwoods?

WRS: I retired before all of these controversial developments appeared.

Success in Lobbying

WRS: My successor is having an awful time. I think some of it is his
own fault in failing to make friends of the legislators. Maybe,
with the reapportionment, if he starts in at the beginning of next

126

WRS: year he' II be a I I right.

He just doesn't like public contact, and he didn't learn to
make contacts. During the three years I had him as an understudy
he didn't do too much. I had to keep needling him. He just didn't
like the public relations aspect of the job.

Fry: Isn't the position of head of something like C.F.P.A. largely pub-
I ic relations?

WRS: Yes, that's right. He's smart, has lots of good ideas, and works

hard, but if you are going to operate with the Legislature you have
to be willing to meet the public and to give and take. He may work
into it; I hope he does.

I got out just in time, however, because I was beginning to
lose my grip. My friends in the Legislature were beginning to dis
appear. It was more difficult to make friends after the legislators
started receiving greater salaries. I was beginning to lose the
influence I had had, although I wi I I say that my last years were
still successful. Having been there so long, I still had good con
tacts. Individual legislators would go to bat for me when I wouldn't
even ask them for it simply because they knew me as an old-timer,
I guess.

Fry: You really had them trained.

WRS: No, I didn't have them trained. They just knew me by reputation
and sight, and when certain measures appeared and I was asking
for defeat or amendment, they would listen to me.

Fry: Until you retired in 1961, did any competition or opposition from
the preservation-conservation element offer you much trouble?

WRS: Yes, they did. They were there, but I never took them to heart too
much. Their power was weak. One thing I credit to my success (and
I'm not patting myself on the back when I say I had a successful
tour of lobbying) is my predecessor, Rex Black. He was one of the
most astute individuals I ever knew.

In addition, I had the support of other lobbyists, like Al
Knorp, who were interested in land ownership and natural resources.
Al Knorp was the mining lobbyist. He was very effective, a natural-
born lobbyist, and very perceptive. He could anticipate things.

During the days of the nefarious Olson administration, Al Knorp
was very close to Gordon Garland, a Democrat who was Speaker of the
Assembly, and Paul Peak, who is now a Supreme Court Judge and who
was also a Speaker of the Assembly. There was a direct telephone
line under the desk of the Speaker of the Assembly to the Governor's
office when Olson was Governor. Paul Peak, the Speaker, used to

127

WRS : carry on telephone conversations on legislation with the Governor
from the Assembly Desk.

Insurrection and an uprising of some of the Assembly members
resulted in Garland's pulling the telephone from under the desk
and tearing the cord loose. They the Assembly unseated Paul Peak,
and Gordon Garland became the Speaker.

A I Knorp was one of the ringleaders working with Gordon Gar
land during that period of time. That's when they were bugging
the hotel rooms of lobbyists. There was the greatest espoinage
going on that you ever saw.

Fry: Emanating from the Governor's office primarily?
WRS: Yes, from Governor Olson.
Fry: Did you have your room bugged?

WRS: Oh yes. We found bugs. The funny thing about it was that some

rooms didn't even need to be bugged. If anybody talked loud, you
could hear the conversation from the top floor to the bottom. In
the Senator Hotel, the ventilating shaft ran up and down from the
bathrooms, and the openings in the bathrooms connected with the
ventilators in each room. Many a secret was disclosed through
those ventilators. But many of the rooms were bugged; we found
bugs in our rooms.

Fry: Could you give an example of how this information might have been
used?

WRS: It was used in various ways: to defeat legislation, to support
legislation. Eavesdroppers learned the line-up of who was who,
what there was to be done, the inner secrets of those who were
opposing, and how they were going to oppose. They were fully in
formed of what was going on.

Fry: Perhaps you could comment on how some of the lobbyists you men
tioned earlier were lined up.

WRS: Do you mean how they were lined up with the legislators and how
they operated?

Fry: Yes.

WRS: The general pattern of the successful lobbyist was always dealing
honestly and straight-forward I y with the legislator. You might
ingratiate yourself with him by giving him some emoluments such as
dinners, by doing something for him such as helping him out with a
piece of legislation he was particularly concerned with. Lobbyists
do a lot of that for a legislator.

128

WRS: The successful lobbyist characteristically, in order to get

the support he wanted, dealt honestly with the man and left to his
own judgment and action the decision as to what he should do. Some
lobbyists spent more money on gratuities. Others spent time actu
ally helping the man become a successful politician and legislator
by helping him with good, sound legislation.

After World War I I , we worked very closely with Randal Dickey
on the water pollution law. We raised $100,000 from industry, and
the State raised $100,000 for the study. We helped them in every
way with the study and made available all the facilities we possibly
could, and provided all the technical and legal help they needed.
The result, I think, was a very successful piece of legislation.

Fry: And cooperation came from Dickey and the rest of the committee?

WRS: Yes, full cooperation.

Fry: Would you explain how that act was written?

WRS: It was left up to the legal minds of one of the industry participants
to write the legislation, and he fell down in the job. When the last
day, the eleventh hour, had arrived, nothing had been written. One
of the engineers was brought into the picture. We sat down with
another attorney and spent some fifty-odd hours writing this legis
lation. Otherwise it never would have been put into form in time.

It removed the power of control from the Department of Environ
mental Sanitation, which was pushing for strict water pollution con
trol. They wanted police regulation. It was another case of a
state agency that wanted full control to put clamps on and to say,
"You're guilty; you're going to jail."

Fry: Didn't the agency have Governor Warren's support?

WRS: Yes, Warren supported the agency. We fought them tooth and toenail,
and we wound up being most successful by our influence and concerted
efforts in the Senate. The Senate finally demanded that the pollu
tion control- districts be set up, which Warren didn't want. He wanted
it on a state-wide basis.

He didn't want the method we specified, by which the local in
dustry representation was to be chosen for committees to interpret
the rules. We specified in the legislation who should represent, and
what their qualifications were to be in order for them to be on these
regional boards. Warren wanted to be able to sny who he wanted on
the boards from a political standpoint.

Fry: W.irren wanted to appoint the representatives?

WRS: Yes, that was one part of it. In addition, he was trying to save

129

WRS : Frank Stead's CDi rector, Department of Environmental Sanitation]

point of view. They wanted it done right away, which was a physi
cal impossibility if nothing else. They wanted all the violations
of pollution that had taken place rectified immediately.

The Governor and Frank Stead were unwilling to allow a reason
able time for industry and people who were causing the pollution to
rectify the situation. Even cities were depositing sewage into the
streams and San Francisco Bay. Time was needed for government agencies
to construct necessary sanitation control facilities.

Provisions were made in the law so the Water Pollution Control
Board could use an approach that would allow industry to make changes
over a period of time and not immediately, because it couldn't be
done right away. Industry and governmental agencies are still in
the process of constructing adequate sanitation facilities.

In addition to fighting this, we had another agency to fight.
The fish and game department want the water more pure than the water
you drink, in order to protect the fish.

Fry: So you' really had two agencies on your back?

WRS: Yes. They have been the agency which has carried on the changes in
the Water Pollution Control Board and its operations. Now it is
named the Water Quality Control Board and more concerned with quality.
Greater quality may eventually come, but we're so much better off
here in California under our present law and water conditions than
existed in the early days in the East and Middle West. Those areas
really have a problem and because of population concentration and
heavy industrial use of water, they have to be more particular about
minimizing contamination and pollution.

If it hadn't been for industry's part in that California legis
lation, I don't know what would have happened. The State was deter
mined to have some kind of legislation to control water pollution.
We've been fortunate in having on these local committees those who
understand the local conditions. The same conditions apply to air
pollution. It's a local condition. We have air pollution control
districts, and it is similarly regulated to fit the situation.

Our industry doesn't say that we're not polluters. We are
polluters. But there is a certain amount of give and take that has
to take place, which is accomplished through legislation. Legisla
tion itself is a compromise by which everybody can live and work.

Fry: Fach one struggling for his own interests.

WRS: Right. No one particular person is going to get the full benefit,
but all persons are going to be able to live and operate and still
not be harmed through contamination if pollution control is handled
in the proper way.

130

Fry: What interests do you think have the best and most powerful repre
sentation in the "Third House"?

WRS: ! think the strongest lobby a few years ago was the teachers' asso
ciation, through the C.T.A. [California Teachers Association]. The
teachers, oil and gas people, insurance and banking people were very
powerful. Near the same level or just behind them would be agricul
ture and its various categories. Manufacturing, of course, covers
all categories and cuts across all the groups, so that it is impos
sible to rate the power exerted by this group.

There was a time, under certain administrations, when labor was
quite strong. It was strong under Olson and even under Warren. A
lot of labor legislation was enacted under the Warren administration.
Since then, labor has lost, and I think it's primarily due to the
fact that they lost the services of Neal Haggerty, who was the labor
lobbyist and who is now back in Washington, D.C. I don't think the
present setup in labor lobbying in California is as effective as it
was when Neal Haggerty was with them.

The League of Cities is quite strong in its operations, more
so than the County Supervisors' Association, which is pretty strong
too.

Fry: in reading some of the provisions of the lobbying legislation that
was passed in 1949, I noticed that there was some desire shown to
regulate or completely eliminate the lawyer-legislator from appear
ing in behalf of a state agency.

WRS: I think you mean before a state agency. As an example, when Charlie
Lyons was Speaker of the Assembly, he was constantly appearing (after
the liquor law was passed) before the State Board of Equalization on
behalf of clients of the liquor industry, such as retailers and whole
salers, whom he represented. He was convicted for conspiracy in liq
uor industry operations and for having obtained things from the Liquor
Control that were in violation of the law.

The lawyers are very jealous. This matter is coming up right
now in a Constitutional amendment which has a clause relative to con
flict of interest. The attorneys in the Legislature are very much
opposed to the bill which' has been passed by the Assembly, because
in the Assembly bill, a lawyer- legislator cannot have anything to do
legally with or for a client.

There is a happy medium. You are bound to come in contact with
a state agency in one way or another as an attorney, so there are
legitimate ways in which nn attorney should be able to conl.ict an
agency. Hul there are illegal ways in which they might contact and
influence an agency. It is quite character! si ic for a strong attor
ney, who is a leader in the Legislature, to appear before a state
agency in behalf of a client and get consideration for his client

131

WRS : that he wouldn't ordinarily get. He gets it because he is a legis-
I ator.

Fry: It gives him an edge in power to bring to bear.

WRS: That's right, and he'll use it, or at least some of them do.

Fry: Are the power and utilities lobbies very strong?

WRS: They are quite strong at times. Hiram Johnson was elected on the

basis that he kick out the Southern Pacific, which is a utility, but
the P. G.&E., Southern California Edison, and all the power people, are
very vitally concerned with taxation. They pay an enormous amount of
taxes.

They are concerned with the equalization of taxes, so they often
take a pretty arbitrary stand in defense of taxation of utility prop
erty. They are quite powerful. Elmer Bromley, for instance, is
over-all directing head of power interests. He represents Southern
California Edison, but also P. G.&E. and all power subsidiaries. He
is a former legislator and a very powerful man in many ways. The
utility organization is pretty effective.

Pacific Telephone and Telegraph has been very powerful in the
past too. Innumerable individuals work for them. They bring in
people from various districts on bills that affect certain districts.
They bring them in and have them work on the legislators from those
districts. They perform a lot of gratuities for the legislators,
like installing telephones for them or taking care of some of their
needs, which ingratiates them somewhat with the legislators.

Fry: Which governors do you think were most amenable to good forest
legislation, from the standpoint of C.F.P.A.?

WRS: Earl Warren was sympathetic to conservation and forest legislation
for two reasons. That was the period in which a lot of forestry
legislation was introduced. He was a governor for three terms, al
though he didn't fill the entire third term. It fell into his lap,
being Governor when so much forestry legislation was passed.

Governor Friend Richardson, I think, was a friend of the tim
ber interests. I don't know of anyone who was unfriendly. Most
of our governors have been rather neutral in many respects with al I
interests. I think we have had good governors.

Fry: Thank you very much. This has been fascinating.

132

INDEX

Agnew, Frank, 89

American Forest Products Industries, 42

Arcata Redwood, 66

Associated Sportsmen, 75

Beaverhead National Forest, 9

Bedwel I , Jess, 3, 6

Bee, Carlos, 99-100

Beek, Joe, 91

Berry, Swift, 34-35, 49-52

Biggar, George, 56-57

Black, Rex, 2, II, 29-35, 53, 126

Blaine County, Montana, 9-10

Blank, Col., 89

Board of Equalization, 19-20, 25-27, 31, 87

Stockton District, 26
Bromley, Elmer, 88, 131
Brown, Governor Edmund, 46
Bryce Canyon, 4, 7
Burns, Hugh, 59, 99, 101 , 102
Butler, Monroe, 88

California Department of Fish and Game, 60-61,

75-77, 80
California, Division of Forestry:

administration, 16, 31, 36, 59, 70

policy, 36, 63-64, 69, 73-84

relations with industry, 70-73

Board of Forestry, 31-32, 34, 37, 54, 78-79, 84
reorganization, 41, 46-48

State Forester, 31-32, 37-40, 78, 84
California Forest Protective Association, 2, 17,

20, 30-31, 36, 39, 41-45, 48-53, I 11-131
California Redwood Association, 51
California Teachers Association, 130
CJMfeHohn, 52, 80

Caribou-Beaverhead National Forest, 3, 5, 6
Carter, 01 lie, 122
Casper Lumber Company, 57, 58
Clar, Ray, 38
Cleary, Don, 96
Colgan, Richard, 49-52
Collins Pine Company, 65-67

133

Col I ier, Randolph, 122-123

Col I ins, Sam, 88

Connaughton, — , 69

Control Burning, 74-75

Cormack, Judge Peter, 46

County government, 17-18, 80

Crafts, Ed, 83

Craig, George, 50-56

Crown, Robert, 99

Crown Zel lerbach Lumber Company, 66

Cruising, 21-22

Davis, Lester, 123

Davis, Mrs. Pauline, 116, 123

Del Norte County, California, 21

Diamond Match Company, 66

Dickey, Randal , 128

Donne I ly, Hugh, 108

Douthitt, Fred, 3

Dunwoody, Char I ie, 29

Education of Schofield, 1-5

Farm Bureau, 87
Favre, Clarence, 3, 6
Fi re control , 69-73
Fi re protection :

private, 17, 36

Fish and Game Commission, 76, 77
Fish and Game Department. See Cal i fornia,

Department of
Flynn, Frank, 90

Forest Conservancy Act, 49, 51, 63
Forest Pest Control Council (1947), 53, 54
Forest Practice Act, 42, 45-46, 48-53, 60-69,
73-74, 77, 79-80

attempts at county control, 80

inspections, 73-74

Forest Practice Committees, 37, 40, 78-79
Forest Purchase Committee, 58
Forsling, Clarence, 3-4, 6
Fritz, Emanuel, 32-33, 49-53, 56, 63, 68

Cai land, Gordon, I 27
Georgia Pacific, 66
Gibson, Luther, I \^
I'tYinne, 87
GiM.-inri, I I , /'">

134

Haggerty, Neal, (C.J.), 116, 130

Hal I, Ralph, 13

Hammond Lumber Company, 13-14, 58

Hannum, General, 39

Hard is/on, Domingo, 47

Hatfield, George, 96, 125

Hubbard, Elbert, I

Hudson, I I I i nois, I

Humbolt Redwood Reforestation Association, 16

Humbolt County, California, 8, 97

Hume Lumber Company, 59

Hunt, Leon, 3

Insect Control, 53-56

Jackson State Forest, 57

Jardi ne, Jim, 3

Johnson, Herbert, (Red), 4,

Keith, John, 27

Kel ly, Earl Lee, 19, 85

Kennedy, Vincent, 88, 106

Klee, , 29-30

Knorp, Al, 114
Know I and, Loe, 59
Kotok , E . 1 . , 35 , 84
Krueger, Dewitt, 27

Legislature, California

Assembly, 105-106, 108

Speakers of the Assembly, 100-101, See Also: Unruh

Senate, 104, 106, 108
committees, 56-58

Forest Study Committee, 56-57
Governmental Effeciency Committee, 102-119

Third House, 85-131, See Also: Lobbying and Lobbyists
Legislative Interns, 119
Little Hoover Commission, 37, 40, 77-79
Little River Redwood Company, 16
Little, Walter, 88, 100
Lobbyist in California, I -I 31

cooperation between, 103, 104

control of Legislation, 101-103

dealings of, 90-93, 95-98, 106-107

inf luen'ces of, 130-131

morality of, 123-127, :e^ Also: dealings

other Lobbyists, 87-95

regulation of Lobbyists, 89, 92-93, 109-111, 115-116

reporting expenses, I 11-112

for State agencies, 118-121

tax Research Bureau, 85-87
Lyons, Char I ie, 88, 100,. 130

135

MacMi I Ian, 92

Malmsten, Harry, 5

Mayo, Jesse, 122-123

McArthur, Rod, 47

McCloud, George, 58

McGinn, Hulda, 88

McMi I Ian, El izabeth, 10

McPherson, Rene, 2

Merriam, Governor Frank, 31-33

Michigan - California Lumber Company, 70

Miller, George, 99-100

Missoula, Montana, 9

tana , . 1-3,

fPa^

Myer, Genera I , 79

orest, 59

National Lumberman's Association, 42-43
Native Daughters of the Golden West, 59
Native Sons of the Golden West, 59-60
Nelson, Dewitt, 37-39, 63, 74
Nelson, Hans, 97

Pacific Lumber Company, 66
Peed, W.W., 13-14
Peek, Paul , 126-127
Pettis, Jack, 89
Phi Ibrick Report, 96-109
Pratt, Merritt, 31-38
Pratt, Mrs. Merritt, 32, 38
Prendergast, Jeff, 46-47

Private forestry, 12-13, See Also: California Forest
Protective Association

Raymond, Francis, 39-40, 74

Re-apportionment, 105

Redwine, Kent, 88

Redwood Reforestation Association, 14

Reforestation, 14-16

Regan, Edwin, 122

Reynold, Frank, 47

Richardson, Governor Friend, 131

Ri ley, Ray L., 25-26, 33

Ri ley - Stewart Plan, 22

Robie, Wende I I , 47

Rosecrans, William, 41, 47-48, 50

Samish, Artie, 89-90, NO, 113-15,
Samoa, Ca I i fornia, I 3
Sampson, Arthur, 5

136

San Bernardino National Forest, 38

Save-The-Redwoods League, 41

Schich, Stewart, 39-40

Selway National Forest, 2

Senator Hotel, Sacramento, 91, 92, 113

Sevier National Forest, 4

Shattuck, Dr. C.H. , I

Show, Bevier, 35

Sierra Club, 79-80, 104, 112

Signal Oil Company, 101-102

Sims, Jimmy, 90-91

Snel I, Ear!, 49

Society of American Foresters, 34-35

Soil Conversation Service, 74

Spencer, A.T., 47

State Board of Equalization, 27-31

State Division of Forestry, See Cal ifornia Division

of Forestry

State Forester: See California Division of Forestry
State Vs. Federal regulation of timber lands, 41-43
Stave rs, Morey, I I 5
Stead, Frank, 129
Stevens, Arthur, 3, 5-7
Stevens, Charlie, 88-89, 106-108
Stewart, Fred, 26

Taxes :

Property, 19-24, 28-29
Tax Research Bureau, 18-19, 21, 85-86
Timber inventory, 81-83
Timber legislation, 116-118
Timber management, 60-66
Timber tax lobbying, 85-87

Union Lumber Company, 15
University of Idaho, 2
Unruh, Jesse, 93, 95, 98-100
United States Forest Service:

field activities, 2-7, 10-12

Forest and Range Experiment Station, 74, 84

Publ ic Relations, 70

reconnaissance, 3-9

relations with industry, 70-73, 82

relations with State, 71-72

timber inventory, 82-83
United States Forest Service:

regulation of private industry, 35, 43-45

137

Vandegrift, Holland, 19, 20, 57

Wai die, Jerome, 99

Walker Foundation, 55

Walker, Ken, 47

Walton, Strother, 60

Warren, Governor Earl, 37, 46-47, 128, 131

Western Forest Conservation Association, 54

Whitaker, Clem, 25

Wood, Fred, 26-27, 96

Woods, C.N., 7

Wyoming-Bridger National Forest, 7, 10

Yosemite National Park, 34
Young, Homer, 3,6,8

Zuni Indians, 72

William Schofield
Bibliography

All of the following articles are incl 'ed in the Bancroft
Library copy, University of California, Berkeley

Schofield, William R. , " Reforestation in the Humbolt Redwood Belt,"

Journal of Forestry. Vol. XXVII, No. 2, February, 1929. pp. 168-175.

, REPORT ON TIMBER TAXATION IN THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA,

submitted to the California Tax Research Bureau by W.R. Schofield,
Forest Engineer. 48 pp. with graphs. Mimeo. November 1, 1932-

, Policy Statement of the California Forest Protective

Association, 7 pp. Mimeo. May 1960.

, -BACKGROUND AND QUESTIONS, relative to Chapter 1847

Statutes of 1965 ( Senate Bill807). [ruling on timber exemption
taxation claims under Section 12 and 3/4], 4 pp. Mimeo. December, 1965.

, Analysis of Section 12 and 3/4, Article XIII of California

Constitution, For John J. Klee, Jr.m Deputy Attorney General;
and cover letter, September 12, 1961 .

, "Detrimental Effect of Taxation Upon the Timber Industry",

speech, 1958.

_, A DIGEST OF CALIFORNIA FOREST AND FIRE LAWS ( Including

1949 Legislation). Typed. 1950 (?).

, HISTORICAL BACKGROUND UP TO AND FOLLOWING THE INTRO_2

DUCTION AND ADOPTION OF SENATE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT NO. 10,
CT;?APTER 36, STATUTES OF 1925. ( Amendment to Section 12 and 3/4,
Article XIII, Constitution of California, exemption growing forest
trees from taxation.) October 1, 1957, pp.13.

SECONDARY SOURCE BIBLIOGRAPHY

Beek, Joseph Allen, Secretary of the Senate, The California Legislature. 1965.

Conwill, Sarah, J., Regulation of Lobbying in Calif ornig. M.A. Thesis, Berkeley,
1959

Erwin Committee Report. " Report of The Joint Interim Committee Investigating
Lobbying Activities," Assembly Daily Journal. First Extraordinary
Session of the California Legislature, March 20, 1950, pp. 376-80.

Farrelly, David, and Hinderaker, Ivan, The Politics of California, the

Ronald Press Company, New York, 1951, pp 160-205. For reprints of
Philbrick Report , articles on Arthur Samish, and the Erwin Report.

Lane, Edgar, Lobbying and the Law, University of California Press, Berkeley,
1964, pp. 224.

McWilliams, Carey, " The Guy Who Gets Things Done", Nation , July 1949

Philbrick Report, " Legislative Investigative Report", Senate Dnily Journal,
April 4, 1939, pp. 1086-1153.

Velie, Lester, "Secret Boss of California", Colliers \ August 13, 1949, pp. 11-13,
and August 20, 1949, pp. 71-73.

Young, C.C., " The Legislature of California", prepared by the Commonwealth
Club of California, Parker Printing Company, San Francisco.

Regional Oral History Office
The Bancroft Library

University of California, Berkeley
1966

Invitation to a 45-minute Screening
of a Televised Oral History Interview

with a California Lobbyist
(forest industries representative)

WHY:

POSSIBLE USES:

COSTS:

CONCLUSIONS;

The purpose of producing this experimental videotape was to provide a
tangible vehicle upon which criticism and advice from others could be
focused. In addition, it seemed necessary to try one pilot taping
to see how much time and effort is actually required for production.
The result is a sample of a televised interview aimed at a wide
variety of possible applications, and as such it should not be con
sidered a sample "oral history" session, since the interview techniques
used and the conditions of public presentation are quite different from
the quiet privacy of the audiotaped interview.

Suggestions from others who have viewed it include

1. Instructional use--in classrooms, in professional conferences, and
in adult education groups such as, in this case, League of Women Voters.
Distribution might be handled by institutional rental film libraries and
thereby offset part of the cost.

2. For deposit in libraries for archival use; however, it does not seem
worthwhile to produce a complete video show for this use alone. Perhaps
a 5-minute tape, done with a small portable machine, would suffice.

3. For educational television.

4. For public service programs on commercial television.

About $500 for a 30-minute film, which includes twenty hours of additional
staff time on an interview series which has already been audiotaped.
About $250 of this amount is to cover the cost of converting the video
tape to 16 mm. movie negative plus one print. This total cost presupposes
that the institution will have TV production facilities and personnel
available without charge to the Oral History Office. It does not include
any editing; the cameras simply roll from start to finish, changing only
to photograph the visuals and titles.

1. By conducting the audiotaping sessions first, the oral historian
can, in the process, gather ideas for appropriate topics as well as
materials for visuals for a subsequent TV taping.

2. Thirty minutes is perhaps a more usable length for a videotape, both
for classroom use and for more public showing.

J}. The idea of eventually building a program of videotaping every
interviewee does not seem justifiable, but individuals of significance
or a series on one topic seem feasible.

4. Videotaping with oral history funds is probably quite a strain on any
budget. Financing of such projects might be done with (a) special grants,
(b) funds from the interested department for instructional use, (c) joint
funding from the audiovisual office of the parent institution, or
(d) possibly in conjunction with a local TV station interested in a
series for public service programs.

•

Amelia R. Fry

Graduated from the University of Oklahoma

in 1947 with a B.A. in psychology, wrote for

campus magazine; Master of Arts in educational

psychology from the University of Illinois in

1952, with heavy minors in English for both

degrees.

Taught freshman English at the University of

Illinois 1947-48, and Hiram College (Ohio)

1954-55. Also taught English as a foreign

language in Chicago 1950-53.

Writes feature articles for various newspapers,

was reporter for a suburban daily 1966-67.

Writes professional articles for journals and

historical magazines.

Joined the staff of Regional Oral History

Office in February, 1959, specializing in the

field of conservation and forest history.

12 9457